Recent Reading: The Year of Living Danishly

I did a double take the first time I saw this writer's name. Helen Russell was the name of my theater professor in college and I didn't think my Helen Russell was still around, much less that she'd just spent a year in Denmark testing the happiness waters. I was right: this is not my Helen Russell in any way, shape, or form. This Helen Russell is a British freelance writer who was living in London, and was married to a man who was offered a job at Lego. (It sounds like the beginning of a storybook: Once upon a time, there was a man who went to work at Lego....) 

Lego beckoned (don't Legos always beckon?) and so Helen and Lego Man, as she calls him, moved. Helen, being a journalist and needing to fill the roughly 675 hours a month that it's dark in Denmark in the winter, decided to write about the adventure. She and Lego Man gave themselves a year to decide if they really wanted to make the Land of the Best Pastries on Earth their permanent home or not. She also set out on her own kind of happiness project to discover why Danes are considered the happiest people in the world. (Something to do with the pastries, was my guess.) 

The Year of Living Danishly was delightful, informative, and witty and it had me debating the merits of moving to a Nordic Wonderland. I told Atticus this morning that the whole time I was reading, I found myself nodding, thinking, "Yes, I could do that. I could live there. I wonder if..." and then I'd have to shake it off, return to reality, and remind myself that moving to Denmark is not an option in our lives. This is not a real thing for me. Not now. Not ever. It's just not. But the pastries...And the pace....

(No. We are not moving to Denmark. We're not even contemplating it. Stop acting like it's a conversation you're going to have with Atticus, Karen.) 

I think if there was a place on earth where I could have the lifestyle of Denmark (minus some of its quirks, because, let's face it, it's majorly quirky*), along with their entire nation's stock of candles for proper hygge-ness, and we could throw in their education and healthcare systems, and experience an average daily temperature that approximates San Diego, and I could be promised a few million more hours of sunshine, I might have a real pro and con list to compose.  

But until I find that place, I'll have to content myself with living Midwesternly. It's not quite the same, sigh. Though happily I can say that we at Casa Edmisten are all about the hygge. And books. Witty books like The Year of Living Danishly. 

*Adding a brief caveat: be aware, if you are sensitive to such things, that Russell does explain the generally casual approach many Danes have to certain intimate things, just fyi. 

Dithering among the snowmen

I was dithering today.

A snapshot of me, talking to me:

Take the Christmas stuff down.

I don't wanna. 

No one else is going to do it. Buddy the Elf isn't here. 

Why do you put up so many decorations? 

Every year you say that. Every year you put them up, sigh happily, and say, "It's so worth it," then every year when it's time to put stuff away, you say, "Why did I do all this stuff?" 

Shut up and put everything away. Clear the decks. Get to work. 

Everything? 

Everything. 

I started to take everything down today. But now I don't have the heart to dismantle the tree. Not just yet. Someone plugged it in this morning, and it looks too pretty to touch. I'll just let it keep twinkling. At least for today.

I put everything else away: the stockings, the Christmas cards, the Santa figurines my sister gave me. The Jesse tree, the Advent calendars, the Christmas mugs. The greenery, the lights from the mantel, the Nativity. The cardboard Santa Claus card caddy that Atticus brought home from Goodwill 32 years ago. It's silly, and retro, and it's perfectly Atticus. I love it.

Sometimes I dither about the other stuff: I have a few snowman decorations, and sometimes I sweep them away with all the other Christmas things ("The fun is over, people! No more winter-y anything! I'm sick of it! Where is spring? Why is it only January?!") I never meant to start a snowman collection. I don't really even like collections (unless we're talking books), and if you asked me if I had a snowman collection, I would say, "No! I don't collect things that collect dust." And yet, here they are, sitting on my hutch, every December:

They sure look like a collection. As with every good thing in my life, I didn't plan them, and would deny that I'd ever have wanted them, but there they are. A few snowmen who make me smile. A happy life. (Just don't call it a collection. It makes me feel like a crazy old cat lady or something.) 

The tree will come down this week, but this year, I decided the snowmen could stay through January. Probably through February. Instead of wishing for spring to be around the corner (because, let's face it, it's not), I'll use the snowmen this year to cultivate the hygge. 

/End-of-dither. 

Poetry Friday: Cheerfulness Taught by Reason

On what could be a dreary, snowy day on which I am captive at home while I wait for a plumber, I am, in the spirit of Hygge, choosing cheerfulness. 

(Hygge is everywhere!) 

Cheerfulness Taught by Reason
Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I think we are too ready with complaint
In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope
Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope
Of yon gray blank of sky, we might be faint
To muse upon eternity’s constraint
Round our aspirant souls. But since the scope
Must widen early, is it well to droop,
For a few days consumed in loss and taint?
O pusillanimous Heart, be comforted,—
And, like a cheerful traveller, take the road—
Singing beside the hedge. What if the bread
Be bitter in thine inn, and thou unshod
To meet the flints?—At least it may be said,
“Because the way is short, I thank thee, God!”

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Tricia has the round up at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

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Speaking of cheerfulness, if you missed my post yesterday about Lesley Austin's swoony, papery goodness, be sure to check it out.