When Lebo mentioned Holy Hygge¹: Creating a Place for People to Gather and the Gospel to Grow in The Book Drive podcast, I rushed to SCRIBD and saved it to my bookshelf. I have savoured it and enjoyed learning about this Danish lifestyle of slow and attentive living.
In her chapter titled Well-Being, Jamie Erickson lays out various ways to take care of ourselves and others: to “regain a sense of value for ourselves and for our friends and neighbours” and to follow Jesus’ example to “have life—and have it more abundantly (John 10:10).” She expands on the following tips for self-care: firstly, to have healthy boundaries; secondly, to grow in the habits of prayer, meditation and memorisation of the Word; thirdly, to practice gratitude; fourthly, to limit the cacophony of noise and practice times of solitude, and lastly, to set aside time for nurturing ourselves.
Jamie goes on to expand on this idea of setting time aside for self-nurture, “One of the best pieces of hyggelig advice I’ve ever received came from my mother-in-law… she encouraged me to find a seasonal hobby that would nurture my mind and heart during the [dreary and hard winter] months… A hyggelig hobby, she said, would not only help me survive the winter, but it would also help reshape my feelings about the season even before it arrives. I’d be able to look forward to that time instead of confronting it with a sense of dread. She wisely urged me to limit my participation of that hobby to the winter and to pick other hobbies to do in other seasons.”
That is wisdom. Do you have a hobby you only practice during the winter months? I tend to knit more when it's cold; there is something special about making woollen things when the skies are overcast and the fire crackles. We also bring out the proverbial soup pot and enjoy more steaming meals, fireside chats and hot chocolate. What about Christmas? We love baking Swiss and German cookies, crafting gifts, singing carols, reading particular stories —A Christmas Carol, anyone? —and listening to Handel’s Messiah alongside Cindy Rollin’s Hallelujah. We know that we only get to do these things once a year, and we appreciate this season more because of all the meaningful things we do together.
Jamie quotes Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” What season are you in? Maybe it’s not a time of the calendar year but a time of life: having demanding little ones, teens who need to talk late into the midnight hours, looking after a sick loved one or just busyness with work. What will help you to embrace these moments?
When we last had a big family move, I learnt to crochet Amigurumi dolls in amongst the piles of boxes. I desperately needed to do something that nurtured my creative side smack-bang in the chaos of sorting, constant cleaning and box filling. Instead of hoping it would just all be over and done with, the Lord gave me a way to deal with the unsettling feeling of disorder in our space.
Jamie writes, “Hyggelige hobbies can give your days a sense of rootedness and rhythm. They can tether you to each season so you can approach your life with expectation. The activities don’t have to be elaborate.”
In her blog post titled “Sourdough, Slowing Down & Sticky Messes”, Melanie wrote that in her need “to slow down and actually enjoy life instead of trying to do All The Things”, she has been “trying to apply the slowing down to what happens in the kitchen as well as life in general.” She mentioned baking sourdough bread once a week on Fridays: assigning this hobby to a specific day makes it doable and gives an air of celebration and cosiness to her family's Friday nights. Simple.
In the days between Christmas and New Year, I’ve been going through Agatha Christie’s books. I’d love to read murder mysteries more often, but assigning them to that time of the year makes them special and something to look forward to. Our family enjoys Korean Drama series, but we know they are pretty addictive, so we leave them for the school holidays. All of these things bring joy to specific times of the year.
Hygge comes from a Danish word meaning “to give courage, comfort, joy”. I’m encouraged to pursue hyggelige hobbies and to make them into simple seasonal practices. When another ‘winter’ season comes into my life, instead of hoping it will disappear quickly, I can embrace it knowing there is a purpose for it.
When the days are too much with us
may we stand in open meadows
and have glimpses
that would make us feel less lost,
have sight of great things
and hear angels singing.²
¹ Pronounced “hoo-gah”
² Paraphrased from The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
Yay😍 I am almost done with it. We should have a book drive discussion on it 💃🏾💃🏾