[ad_1]
Grilling outdoors with a cold beer in hand while your friends sit around a table mixing cocktails and peeling shrimp is hygge. A swim party can be just as hygge as a hike on the Lykken Trail or camping in Idyllwild. In Joshua Tree, sitting around the campfire with friends drinking wine and watching falling stars is slam dunk hyggelig.
Without the pandemic, Hygge might again be the special little domestic pleasure of 5.5 million people who live on the Baltic Sea. True, one of the most important elements in creating a really hygge atmosphere – family and friends – has been conspicuously and painfully absent for the past 18 months, but they are gradually trickling back and once again our human relationships and the simple joy of chatting friends (too when they sit 6 feet away) miraculously takes place. But in every other respect the pandemic has offered the opportunity to perfect one’s hygge. Initially, people reacted to the increased length of stay in their own living space as a kind of domestic restriction. But we all know by now that the flip side of self-exile can be an opportunity to live well in a small ideal world that we create for ourselves and our families.
The evolving paradigm of our home-centered lifestyle lends itself wonderfully to hygge. I’ve heard and read about it lately that the three points that define our movements in general – home, work, and vacation spot – for many people are only at home and vacation spot as their work becomes remote and virtual. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky recently spoke on CNN about many of their bookings now taking a month or more. you no longer have to limit yourself to a week’s vacation and then rush back to the office. You are taking the office with you on vacation.
I’ll admit my evidence is anecdotal, but several real estate aficionados in Coachella Valley say a lot of their buyers are people finding a perfect little house or condo in Palm Springs to have two houses to live their domestic life with, to work, and vacation / play.
This new reality calls for a reassessment of our lives through a hygge lens. It’s not a great stretch for those of us who love the desert. When I first came to the desert 25 years ago, it was a guest in my friend Barbara’s Spanish revival house from the 1930s in old Las Palmas. Between the classic old pool, gas fireplace, hammock by the small fountain, roof garden, lights on the palm trees, Billy Haines furniture, a range of Mammut Weber grills and revolving doors from old friends and new acquaintances, it was a hygge paradise. There were times when five or six of us would gather there for a week and would not leave the premises except to run to Jensen and spend a night at El Mirasol.
It is fitting that Danish design is ubiquitous in many modern mid-century homes in Coachella Valley. In a chapter about hyggekrog, the particularly hygienic place or corner in your home, Wiking advises that wood is an aesthetic element alongside candles, a lot of pillows and maybe even a fireplace. Indeed, modern Danish furniture (with the exception of Arne Jacobsen’s Egg Chair and Poul Henningsen’s lamps) is all about the warmth of wood. My Hans Wegner wooden sideboard (which contains my stereo components) is second in shape after the fireplace hyggelig.
The holidays are of course hygge. Despite the ubiquitous kitsch and commercialization, you have to be a total grinch not to enjoy the little things that make the vacation hygge.
It doesn’t just have to be caviar and champagne. It can be easy. When I was spending Christmas in Denmark for the first time, I discovered that Danes don’t give big presents for Christmas. It’s about small, special gifts. I remember the gifts I received. Malene gave me a fisherman’s sweater with suede elbow and shoulder patches. Her father made me several Mozart cassette compilations and her mother gave me a little watercolor that she had painted. Your sister knitted me a pair of woolen socks. In retrospect, I realize that all of these gifts were very, very hygienic.
Okay, I’m not advocating for everyone to knit wool socks over the holidays (although now that I think about it, knitting itself is hygge) but I suggest if you haven’t already, it may be time friends, family and to gift yourself with the elements that will make deliciously hygge not only these holidays, but all the days, months and years that are to come.
[ad_2]
