Summer Hygge

Hygge “is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of coziness and comfortable conviviality with feelings of wellness and contentment.”[1]

Winter is fading. Days are lengthening. Light infuses our homes earlier in the day and later in the night. We still need sweaters and cardigans but the air is warming and the daffodils have poked up out of the earth, tying us with pioneer women of the past and the strength to create beauty, no matter where we find ourselves. As the season slowly shifts, we start to shift our homes. Heavy blankets feel claustrophobic. Wool and cashmere are no longer snuggly but suffocating. Summer is coming.

Not all of us live in places where summers are unending, smothering blankets of heat and humidity, where the very sky loses its blue and trees start to die. Not all of us live in places with watering bans as our lakes start to shrink. But some of us do. A large portion of our group lives right here in Texas, where it is hot as hot can be and that heat is coming. How do we summer Hygge?

I find Hygge truly appealing even if I can never say the word right. I love the embracing of comfort, not in a lazy, snowflake, I-have-no-guts-and-must-be-always-coddled comfort. Not a refusal to be sweaty, or labor, or to get some dirt under your nails and in your hair comfort. Hygge isn’t that kind of comfort. It’s a healing comfort. A cup of peppermint tea at the end of a long day, that old t-shirt your hubby won’t throw away, your kids’ worn lovies and blankies, familiar spaces that say this is us and I’m glad we’re here together. A weathering comfort, a familiar endurance. A strong, determined comfort. On some level, as homemakers, our craft, our art, is creating wellness first for our families and then out to the rest of our little circles of community through hospitality. Studying Hygge is a great way to train ourselves to see and apply health and contentment in our homes and families.

Hygge is easy on stormy nights in the fall and winter, at least for me. These things need warmth, puddles of warmth, be they throws, movies, music, or food. Cold darkness is met and matched by warmth.

But what about summer?

Producing summer Hygge is a challenge for me. Part of that may be Hygge’s roots. It didn’t grow up in a place that lives through triple digits for months on end, or places with such high humidity that breathing is like living in a swamp. It’s Scandinavian. Think snow and half the year being mostly night. Of course, they’re all about being warm. Summer isn’t my favorite season. The only good thing about summer is swimming and I don’t have a pool or even a clean creek. Summer is wearisome. My soul starts to feel a bit crisp around the edges. Everything is sweaty and dying and all the color is leached from earth, sky, and trees by the relentless sun. But, I can’t not create comfort in my home from May to October. That wouldn’t be tending my hearth, that would be only tending it when it’s convenient for me. HearthKeeper isn’t fair-weather only work.

But what is Hygge when you need to be cool?

●   Sweet tea

●   Cold beer

●   Homemade ice cream

●   Cicadas

●   Fireflies

●   Shade

●   Green

●   Water

●   Short dresses

●   Flip flops

●   Crisp sheets

●   Sunlight

●   Cold veggies

●   Grilling

●   Berries

●   4th of July

●   Pitchers of cut flowers

●   Live music

●   Lemonade

I ponder and I think and make lists. I look at pictures. I think about summer in the south, and I think we’ll need more ice tea and salads and tacos on the menu. Maybe I’ll use a Turkish towel as a throw on the couch instead of a heavier knit one. Maybe I’ll put a fountain in the backyard to create water ambiance, and lights in the tree to draw us out after dark. Large green plants, lovers of heat and sun, singing of cool and shade, need to surround my home in and out.

Light-wash blue jeans and white t-shirts, flip flops, and shaggy hair. Wrinkled linen and breathable cotton. Casual long dresses, unbinding, and un-constrictive. Hygge talks a lot about thick socks, a delight in the winter, but nauseating in the summer. Flowing is better in the heat.

If we are the wielders of such comfort, not a weak spoiling that creates pansies, but a gathering in, a shaping of rest, contentment, and wellness how does that impact the church? One of the first ways we gloriously serve our churches is through our loving service to our families, our HearthKeeping. We’re the wielders of hospitality. The practice we put in our homes, the training, and prepping fills us. It molds and shapes us. It dresses us in beauty that has nothing to do with our outward appearance. Many of the women showcased by the world as our prime examples are harsh, bossy, and all hard edges. They aren’t comfortable, they don’t comfort, and they have no curvy hips for children or husbands.

If we dare to be creatures of comfort, Hygge will infuse our churches and affect the attitudes of our service. It will infuse our services and our buildings so that we don’t just go through the motions but beautify, smooth rough edges, make spaces welcoming by our love of beauty, comfort, and calmness. By our belief that these things are important.

On any given Sunday, our churches fill with broken, exhausted, scarred, and wounded brothers-in-arms. The pew next to you, the one across the room, behind, before may seem to just hold the same normal men and women it always does, but look at them with eyes of faith and not sight. These are fellow soldiers who, like you, are always in the fight. The fight against the Devil, the world, and mostly our sins. Some are in triage, bleeding-out from their wounds, some are so broken, their eyes have gone hollow, and some are in pain from embedded shrapnel. This is us, all of us, on any given Sunday. What can we do to soothe these war aches?

Hygge.

We can practice comfort.

A hug.

A gentle word.

A shared joke and a shared meal.

Owning our places of service and applying the same beauty we practice in our homes to our churches and church buildings is caring for one another. Yes, the church is the people, not the building, but so is home. You can create a home anywhere because home isn’t the building, home is us. We’re the dwelling place. We’re the hearts and hearths of our homes. What a privilege and responsibility. What a wonder, joy, and kind of intimidating. We are the dwellings.

This should infuse our churches so that they are calm and comforting to weary fellow soldiers and welcoming to visitors. We should think of our homes, on a certain level, as a training ground for the bigger work of the church, just like we should raise our children with the church in mind. (Quiet, pay attention, service, etc.)

We should let the practice of Hygge fill all our lives so that whether we’re managing the nursery or the kitchen, bringing food for our potluck lunch, or helping with a conference we are creating beauty and comfort.

Hygge.

We should think of our Monday-Saturday work in light of Sunday, always. Serving our families, building, creating our homes, gentle and quiet spirits is serving our churches. We don’t need something grand. We don’t need a ministry. We need to serve our families and that is serving our churches as a whole.

If our homes are in disarray, we won’t be much help to our churches, and if we don’t value Hygge our churches will be cold, inhospitable, and just the bare minimum. And this isn’t stuff. Stuff is our tools and our tools will be different. We will have different budgets, levels of creativity, gifts, and diversity. My tools for creating comfort are different than your tools.

Hygge is an issue of the heart.

You may like a manicured lawn and I might like things a bit wild, wooly, and overgrown, but we can both agree that people function better with plants around. Something the world thinks it’s just discovered but that we HearthKeepers have always known. Plants are good for our souls. They’re nourishing, welcoming, and beneficial.

Hygge in the heart is calm, trusting, peaceful, wise, and kind. It’s not demanding, judgmental, harsh, bossy, or controlling. Great beauty and great strength are here. An amazing opportunity to be of great service to our churches is here. Honestly? Sometimes just being at church with a smile and wearing something cute can elevate the whole day for the rest of us. This doesn’t have to be big and elaborate.

What an encouragement we can be to our pastors and each other if we women embrace the power of Hygge, make it a matter of the heart, practice it in our homes, and let it infuse our churches.

Summer is coming? How will you Hygge in the heat? How will you Hygge in the church?

[1] Wikipedia