Christmas hygge

 At our Hookery Zoom last night (doesn't that have speedy and artisan connotations? Balls of yarn flying with abandon through the cold dark skies) we were making plans for our virtual Christmas party on 23rd December. Which turns out to be the night before the night before Christmas, or Christmas Eve Eve, or Christmas Adam (because Adam came before Eve*) or in fact Little Christmas, if you live in Denmark! Which we don't. Although the joys of Zoom do allow us to be in Newtownabbey and Glasgow all at the same time. 

So, Sun One came along just as I was Googling a nice picture to go alongside the Hookery facebook invitation to our Little Christmas Party (you can see how we love a pun), and to my wonder and astonishment he had never heard of hygge. What have we been doing in this house? Half an hour later, after hundreds of unbearably beautiful Scandi images, he decided that it was a middle-aged woman thing, based loosely on gnomes. I was appalled. Thankfully, as we went through the front door this morning and I declared that no, hygge wasn't a thing like the windowsill tomte or the door wreath, he did manage to grasp the abstract noun idea of a feeling or a lifestyle. Why didn't you just say that last night, he asked. I'm pretty sure I did.

All this to explain why I came across this hygge webpage this afternoon - Christmas hygge being still in the search bar and dinner being not quite ready to be cooked. It is the opening quote that I'm really very struck by this evening:

“I hope you find some time this week to get really, really quiet.  To curl up in a big cozy chair and watch a movie you’ve seen a million times before.  To hug people you love.  To wrap up in a warm blanket and read a good book. To drink hot cocoa from a Christmas mug.  To stand outside in the crisp night air and marvel at the stars. I hope you find the time this week to sit silently in front of your life and contemplate how magical it really is, before we turn the page and greet a New Year.” – Mandy Hale 

What a wonderful thing to stop and sit silently and contemplate the magic of our lives. To find joy in the small things, and the big. And to be thankful. I seem to be spending weeks drifting from one thing to the next, but I'm going to stop now, and sit silently. Just as soon as dinner is cooked...

*All credit to Hookery Miranda for the Christmas Adam. She's very clever!