Our Joyful Winter

March! How is it March? In a few weeks we will celebrate a resurrected life and welcome the feast of Easter and usher in Spring and Eastertide. The snow will thaw (figuratively I mean come on I live in Los Angeles), the flowers will bloom. 

It’s been quite a winter. Our best ever! I took the bull by the horns and knew that if I didn’t set up a system in place to survive the winter and fight the dementors of depression that the winter would feel barren and dead instead of how the Creator intended it with hibernation and rest. I wanted to embrace the beauty of winter and surrender to its truths and rhythms. There is a time for everything and this was the time of preparation for growth and life. 

I started small and found a pinterest article on how to embrace winter and one of the ideas was to try some “Hygge”. Oh boy did I! It’s the Scandinavian way of embracing the cozy lifestyle during winter. I listened to the Little Book of Hygge and got the basics down and I was ready to begin. The Hygge Manifesto lays out the 10 basics of Hygge: Atmosphere, Presence, Pleasure, Equality, Gratitude, Harmony, Comfort, Truce, Togetherness, and Shelter. Listening to the book with the author’s Danish accent transported me and filled me with hope for a joyful winter. Joyful Winter, two words that I never imagined putting together.

I used to decorate for Christmas primarily using silver, black and white (except the colorful office) in a scheme I called Cozy Cabin with buffalo check, pine cones, camping lanterns, wood, cozy textiles, and so many candles. The past few years I craved red and green so instead we keep the Black and White cabin things for use post Christmas. It’s a nice transitional decorating scheme for my brain that likes her environment to indicate her state of life.

Not that the Hygge lifestyle requires any type of purchasing of things but we did find one item to be crucial to add to the whole vibe… a little electric fireplace. You should have seen the puppy dog eyes we pulled on Matt to get him to agree to it and how hyped the kids were when it arrived!

I have created tiny Hygge cozy monsters with my children and spouse. They have leaned into the cozy and it makes the long nights feel fun and loving. We have warm lighting with electric candles, nice scented candles, the fireplace going, a corner of the couch we call ‘cozy corner’, a heated blanket, books, magazines… I make soup and fresh bread. We slow down. We Sabbath. We nap. We take walks when we can as often as we can. The strangely rainy days have not hampered our spirits. My mental health this winter has been the best it’s ever been. Even when we added Lent and fasting! 

It’s literally my job to get ahead of everything, to see the future and where things could go wrong and anticipate the pitfalls and steer my team away from failure. I am good at it. I am good at imagining possibilities and problems with my vocation. But. It’s a lifelong lesson for myself to be in the current season and not get too ahead of myself either. To be grateful for where I am and where my family is and take it the next right thing at a time. A step and step again. I’d be tempted during this time when reading a terrific magazine heralding the coming of Spring to start plotting the Spring recipes or parties or decorating or trips and start feeling like I am already behind. But that’s not true. Advertisers and retailers have to be constantly in the future so you feel that you can’t keep up. Lies.

Where you are is just enough as it is. Be present to the current season. Even if it's winter.