Our Kind of Hygge

 My friend Louise likes rainy weather. On days when the weather is dreary, she opens all her curtains, turns on her lamps and candles, and watches the rain. She also likes pie, and she loves to have friends over for coffee and pie or cake. Now that I’ve moved away, I miss her open door to her comfortable, tastefully decorated home.

At home tonight in cold January, we are celebrating coziness and fellowship. We have a blazing fire in the fireplace. Supper was soup with biscuits and a little glass of red wine. We lit the candles and muted the television.

We have our own way of enjoying conversation and companionship. We live a simple life. Today we went to the gym, we talked to our family members on our cell phones, communicated with loved ones on Facebook, and as soon as the fire slows down we’ll go sleep under the quilt.

There’s a word fairly new to English speakers to describe this joyful, comfortable, happy life. It’s the Danish word hygge, pronounced “HUE gah”. Several new books describe this lifestyle in more detail. Here’s an explanatory article  

The novel I’m writing House of Seven is about a group of people who try to establish a home of contentment. Seven needy souls want to find the kind of love and comfort that most of us seek. What will they have to do to make a comfortable home? Will all of them achieve their goal?

Since this novel is set in Mississippi over a century ago, these people know nothing of hygge, but they have a desire for contentment.