If you read design blogs – and as a young single homeowner, I can assure you I do – you must have heard of hygge. Hygge is the Danish concept of – to quote The New Yorker – a “quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.”
Over the past few years, hundreds of books, articles and blog pieces have suggested ways to introduce some hygge into your life. Especially in the winter, there are suggestions for cheerful game nights, mulled cider in front of the fire, soft cashmere throws and the glow of candlelight.
There are also some very specific and strange suggestions, like the all-day Star Wars marathon at home with 5 kids that one blogger suggested.
The following are some totally made-up hygge things that I would somehow not be surprised to find during my design blog reading:
Go to YouTube and search for songs from your favorite musicals + “figure skating.” Make a playlist. Watch them all.
The other day I thought “you know, I bet you could search YouTube for ANY song from a musical plus the term “figure skating” and get a result.” THEN I thought “that legitimately sounds like something a blog would suggest as a hygge activity.” Then this whole thing happened.
As a treat, put on an extra pair of socks
Solve a decades-old murder using information readily available on Google
Nothings cozier than sitting in your favorite chair and finally getting down to business on what happened to JonBenet … only to see that three hours passed in an instant and you still DON’T KNOW.
Watch a birdfeeder from a window while you wear a big sweater
Have your boss over for a Dutch Blitz party. Serve those windmill cookies. You know the ones.
Since I wrote this draft, Dutch Blitz has shown up in my Amazon suggestions. I guess Amazon’s hygge activity this winter is tracking my every step on the internet. Hey guys! Loved Mrs. Maisel.
Play Hot Potato with an actual hot potato
Replace the harsh overhead lighting in your office with a bunch of candelabras
Skip the nightly news and have each member of your family read articles from the day’s newspaper out loud
It’s just how people had their existential crises in the 1800s!
Invite all of the stray cats from the neighborhood in and invite your pet-lover friends over for Hygge Cat Night
Go caroling, except with non-Christmas wintery songs
Your neighbors will feel very hygge when you sing them It’s A Marshmallow World In The Winter on a Tuesday in February, and you know what? So will you.
Sit around the fire and everybody has to say what they would name a baby right now.
Go to a small hunting cabin and have a soup contest.
This isn’t so much a fake hygge thing, as much as a real upstate NY thing my parents do with their friends.
Have a Friends marathon, but with reading the scripts out loud instead of watching the show.
And THIS isn’t so much a fake hygge thing, as much as a real thing we did on our school trip to Spain in high school.
Spin a globe and wherever your finger stops, you have to pretend you’re in that place for the night.
Put all of your blankets on the floor, one on top of the other. Now all your blankets are wearing blankets.
It’s hygge but for blankets.
Cookies + Sangria 