by Meik Wiking
FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Every year in the second half of December, a full-blown migration takes place in Denmark. People originally from other parts of Denmark who usually live in Copenhagen pack their stuff, plus tons of presents, and jump on a train headed toward their hometown.
A hyggelig Christmas begins and ends with family and friends. Those are the people we feel safe around, the ones who make us feel comfortable. They know us, and we enjoy spending time with them because we love them. Time and time again, the quality of our social relations has been shown to be one of the best predictors for our emotional well-being.
In our everyday lives, many of us feel we see too little of our loved ones. Christmas is an opportunity to make up for that; to gather around a table full of delicious treats in order to enjoy life and one another’s company. That is the key ingredient in a hyggelig Christmas. People all over the world do the very same each year, but only in Danish homes do people draw a collective sigh of relief when someone reassures the others that “This is hyggeligt.” In that moment, both hosts and guests feel that Christmas has arrived; the proper spirit of hygge has been achieved.
But family is not enough in order to put together a hyggelig Christmas. Even though a lot of people see friends and family mostly during the holidays, this can be done all year round.
TRADITIONS
FOOD
Around Christmastime, certain rituals and traditions must be adhered to in order to achieve hygge. A Danish Christmas needs the proper decorations, food, and activities in order to be considered a “real” hyggelig Christmas.
First, there is the food. Danish food. Heavy Danish food. If you search the Internet for long enough, I am convinced you will find diets that include almost everything. There are diets where you eat only meat or only fat, water diets, diets with lots of carbs and diets without any. There are diets of vegetables and even diets of sunlight. Nonetheless, I have yet to come across a diet that would accept Danish Christmas food.
The main protagonist in the Christmas menu is the meat, which is either roast pork or duck—often both. It will be accompanied by boiled potatoes, or caramelized potatoes, stewed sweet-and-sour red cabbage, gravy, and pickled gherkins. Some have cream-stewed cabbage, sausages, and various types of bread, too.
To complete the feast, we have a truly Danish invention: risalamande (it comes from the French ris à l’amande, and this makes it sound fancier) is half part-whipped cream, half part-boiled rice, with finely chopped almonds and topped with hot cherry sauce. Eating risalamande is not just a delicious experience, though. It is very much social. Because hidden in the big bowl of dessert is one whole almond.
Usually, when everybody has been served a bowl of risalamande, a silence spreads across the room. Eyes shift from person to person. It is more similar to a poker game or a Western-style shootout than a Christmas tradition. “Who’s got the almond?” Whoever finds it gets a present and will be the subject of comments about always being lucky (and, somehow it does actually seem that some people are better at getting the almond than others).
Soon the silence is replaced by questions: “You’ve got the almond, haven’t you?,” “You’re hiding it, just like last year, aren’t you?” The aim of the one who has found the almond is to hide it and deny having found it in order to lure the others into eating everything in their bowl: it becomes a kind of perverted eating contest. Around Christmastime, eating a dessert turns into a hyggelig social activity in itself. Do you think it sounds delicious? You should taste it. Fortunately for our bodies, we only get to feast on these dishes once a year.
DECORATIONS
No hyggelig Christmas is complete without the proper decorations. These may vary even more than the food, as every family has inherited its own decorations from parents and grandparents. But they may include figures of nisse (an elf or gnome), animals, and Father Christmas, mini-nativity figures and cornets or woven hearts made of glossy paper.
Woven paper hearts are rarely seen outside Denmark. Their origin has been attributed to Hans Christian Andersen, who was a master at paper cuttings. They’re made out of two double-layered cutouts of glossy paper, and the flaps of the two cutouts are woven together to make the heart shape. They come in various colors and have different motifs, and every Dane knows how to craft at least a simple one. (See the section “How to Make Woven Hearts” later in this chapter.)
Then there are candles (of course). When 100 percent of the time spent at home in December is during the hours of darkness, you need various sources of lighting, and candles are hyggelige. A specific Danish version of a Christmas candle is the advent candle, painted like a tape measure with dates from December 1 to December 24.
Each day the corresponding piece of candle is burned away. However, few people light the calendar candle when they are on their own. Rather, it is done either in the morning, when parents are frantically trying to get everybody ready for school and work, or in the evening, when darkness has spread again and the family is assembled around the dinner table. The calendar light is literally the centerpiece of the family. It constitutes a natural point and time marker to assemble around. And besides, it feeds the Danes’ fetish for the countdown to Christmas.
COUNTDOWN TO HYGGE
The advent candle is not the only way Danes count down to the ultimate hygge day of the year. Danish children have advent calendars and open a flap each day to unveil a Christmas symbol or motif.
A more extravagant version is a series of boxes of wood or cardboard, each of which contains, say, a small Christmas bauble or a sweet. Some families even have present calendars and children get a small present each day until Christmas—when they will get even more.
And then there are the TV calendars. They are mostly for kids and provide a hyggelig activity to make their wait for the big day tolerable. Every year, most TV stations have their own julekalender—a story usually related to Christmas with twenty-four connected episodes, reaching a climax on December 24, when the adults are busy with last-minute preparations.
Emphasizing that Christmas really is the time for hygge, one of the recurring characters in these shows is Lunte, a nisse, who usually greets people by saying, “Hyggehejsa” (hygge hello). A new TV calendar is produced every year, and there is always an old one that is being shown again. And while children are laughing and having a good time watching these shows, you will often find the adults snatching glimpses of the screen and smiling to themselves, reminiscing about being a child and watching the very same scenes while waiting for the coming of Christmas Day.
Naturally, these things are in themselves hyggelige. But they are also important because they are traditions. And traditions matter to hygge. Traditions remind us of all the other good times we have had with family and friends. We feel there is a part of Christmas or hygge hidden in these actions and items that have been part of our whole life. Without them, something is missing. Christmas just would not be the same.
THE RACE TO RELAX
Getting a bit out of breath reading about all the necessities for a Danish Christmas? I completely get it. All the things I have sketched out here do contribute to the pressure for hygge around Christmas.
If people are not feeling the hygge, something is not right. Christmas is deemed a failure.
All the preparations for a hyggelig Christmas are quite often stressful and, indeed, not very hyggelige. Now, this may seem a bit contradictory, but it actually makes sense. Hygge is possible only if it stands in opposition to something which is not hygge. It is essential for the concept of hygge that it constitutes an alternative to everything that is not hyggeligt in our everyday lives. For a brief moment, hygge protects us against that which is not hyggeligt. There must be anti-hygge for hygge to be valuable. Life might seem stressful. It might seem unsafe and unfair. Life is often centered on money and social status. But life is none of these things in moments of hygge.
Remember my friend who commented that the only way our time in the cabin could be
more hyggelig was if a storm broke outside? This is hygge. The more it sets the here and now apart from the tough realities of the outside world, the more valuable it becomes.
In this way, achieving hygge would not be possible without all the bustle and turmoil leading up to Christmas. All the money, stress, work, and time being sacrificed in the preparations for Christmas leads up to hygge as a climax. Hygge is postponed in order to be accomplished. Knowing friends and family have worked hard all December in order to get together and not focus on work, money, and all things profane is the meaning of hygge.
But Christmas still includes moments that threaten to compromise hygge. As hygge is about letting go of the everyday, the focus on, for example, money and the giving and exchanging of presents always threatens to contaminate the pure and pristine hygge.
Giving and receiving presents may cause someone to feel exposed or emphasize differences in status. Receiving too big a gift makes you feel in debt to the giver, while giving too big a gift is frowned upon, as it asserts the giver’s superior position. Demonstrations of power are not welcome in hygge. In Denmark, Christmas hygge is egalitarian. It is about relations and community, not individuals trying to draw attention to themselves. It is not possible to achieve hygge if anybody feels excluded or superior to anybody else.
Therefore, the best Christmases are the ones where everything outlined in this chapter is achieved and where the danger element of gift-giving is eliminated by striking a balance between giving and receiving. Fortunately, once the presents have been exchanged, there are plenty of gift-free, hyggelige days of relaxation and lunches until New Year’s Eve, when hygge is again sacrificed so that even more preparations can be made.
ÆBLESKIVER
(EH-BLEH-SKI-VER)
A traditional Danish treat for the Christmas holidays is æbleskiver. Don’t forget to serve it with gløgg—(see the recipe for gløgg in Chapter 4). For this you need a special pan—an æbleskiver pan—which can be found and ordered online.
Serves 4–6.
Cooking time 45 minutes (including 30 minutes rest for the dough)
3 eggs
Scant 2 cups buttermilk
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons melted butter
confectioner’s sugar, to serve
jam, to serve
1. Mix egg yolks, buttermilk, flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda together well. Cover the mixture and let it rest for thirty minutes.
2. Once the mixture has risen, whip the egg whites until stiff and fold gently into the mixture.
3. Heat the æbleskiver pan and put a little butter in each hole. Pour some of the mixture into each hole, filling them three-quarters full and cook over a medium heat. Turn the æbleskiver frequently, so they are cooked evenly. This usually takes five to six minutes. Make the first turn when they have formed a brown crust at the bottom but the dough on top is still runny, using a knitting needle or skewer.
4. Serve them hot with confectioner’s sugar and your favorite jam.
HYGGE TIP: GET KNITTING
Why might someone have a knitting needle laying around? Because knitting is extremely hygge. It is a sign of “everything is safe”–it has a certain grandma vibe to it—and even the sound of knitting is hygge. Knitting also brings calmness to the situation and atmosphere. In fact, one of my friends is currently studying to be a midwife. She and her class were told by one of the professors that they should take up knitting because it would have a calming effect on people in the room when the babies were being delivered. Most of the students in the class were knitting during the next class. Oh, and of course, there are bonus hygge points for socks and scarves you’ve knitted yourself.
CHRISTMAS WOVEN HEARTS
There is a long tradition in Denmark for making pleated hearts out of paper as ornaments for the Christmas tree.
The origin of the tradition is unknown, but the oldest known heart was in fact made by Hans Christian Andersen in 1860. It is still kept in a museum. In the early twentieth century, making Christmas hearts became widespread, particularly perhaps because pleating the hearts out of glossy paper was considered to improve children’s fine motor skills. Today families with kids will spend a healthy part of Sunday afternoons in December making Christmas hearts.
HOW TO MAKE WOVEN HEARTS
What you need: Two different-colored sheets of glossy paper (here, red and blue), a pair of scissors, a pencil, and a bit of patience.
STEP 1:
Fold the colored sheets of glossy paper in half. (If the paper is colored on only one side, make sure the colored side faces outward.)
On the outer side of each folded piece of paper, draw an outline of the U shape with 4 cut lines (one heart X and one heart Y). The straight edge of the U shape should be along the fold of the paper.
STEP 2:
Cut out the shapes including along the cut lines. You will have one cutout of each color.
Each cutout will have two layers of paper and five flaps.
STEP 3:
There are only two possible actions when pleating the flaps: a flap either goes through the middle of another flap or has another flap going through the middle of it. Adjacent flaps alternate, so if one flap goes through another, the adjacent flap will do the opposite.
To create the woven heart, flap 1 of the blue cutout is threaded through the middle of flap E of the red cutout; flap D is threaded through flap 1; flap 1 through flap C; flap B through flap 1; and flap 1 through flap A.
Repeat this process starting with flap 2 but reverse the process beginning by threading flap E through flap 2.
Flap 3 must then be threaded like flap 1; flap 4 like flap 2; and flap 5 like flaps 3 and 1.
When flap 5 has been woven through flap A the heart is complete. You are now a qualified Dane!
CHAPTER TWELVE
SUMMER HYGGE
THE LIVING IS EASY
While summer may not encourage the use of candles and fireplaces, summer can be hyggelig, too. Summer is the smell of new-mown grass, suntanned skin, sunscreen, and salt water.
It is reading in the shadow of a tree, enjoying the long summer nights, and standing around the barbecue with your friends. Summer doesn’t mean you have to turn down the hygge. It is just a different kind of hygge from that of autumn or winter. It involves making use of the sun and the warmth and nature, but summer hygge still builds on the key elements of togetherness and good food. Here are five suggestions you can use to get the hygge going during summer.
1. THINK CIDER HOUSE RULES
There are few things more hyggelig than spending a day in an orchard picking fruit. About once a year, my friends and I go to Fejø, a small island in the southern part of Denmark known for its apples. There are rows and rows of apple and plum trees. If we hit the island late in the summer, the Opal plums are ripe and the Filippa apples are ready.
Spending one day at the orchard allows you to hygge another day by making jams or preserving the fruit you picked in other ways. This year, I hope we can have a go at making cider. Maybe it’s time for that pantry party we talked about earlier.
There are many pick-your-own farms scattered throughout the countryside in the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
2. THROW A BARBECUE FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS
Nothing gets the hygge going faster than lighting the barbecue. This is a type of hygge practiced in most parts of the world. Invite your friends and family over and get cooking together. Light the barbecue, and while you wait for the coals to get to just the right temperature, have a game of croquet.
3. JOIN OR BUILD A COMMUNITY GARDEN
At the moment, community gardens seem to be popping up everywhere, and with good reason. They are a wonderful way of getting the hyggelig atmosphere of a village into a bigger city. Tending to your tomatoes while having a chat with other gardeners is both hyggelig and meditative. In addition, it br
ings people in the local neighborhood together and fosters the development of community spirit. What’s not to like?
Building community gardens was one of the proposals recommended by the Happiness Research Institute when we were working with a town just outside Copenhagen, trying to come up with ideas that would improve the social fabric and reduce isolation and loneliness in the community. But it was such a great idea that I thought we should build one ourselves. So we did. Across the street from our office is a church that has space for around twenty raised plant beds. We ordered seven tons of dirt and spent one Sunday afternoon building the garden, and of course, to top off the hygge, we finished the day with a barbecue.
4. PICNICS BY THE BEACH
Summer is a wonderful time of year to go to your local farmers’ market and fill your basket with strawberries, cherries, and watermelon. Add some bread and cheese to the basket, and you’re good to go. Bring all your friends, or just that one special person, and find a spot near the sea. This is the recipe for one of the most hyggelig activities you can do throughout the summer. A whole day can easily pass just in talking, reading, and enjoying the freedom of not having to do anything.
5. CARGO BIKE AROUND
What better way to experience your city or neighborhood than by cycling around it? Of course, being from Copenhagen, I might be biased in this regard. So if you have the good fortune—as I do—to know some good people who own a cargo bike, you might be able to borrow it for a day. A cargo bike is a bicycle that allows you to have a passenger or two. A three-wheeled bicycle with a large box in front for transporting your kids, your spouse, dog, groceries or whatever you want to take for a ride. Of course, you could walk or drive. But the cargo bike can be turned into a movable fortress of hygge.
