"Hyggeligt" Night With Friends...

I got a text earlier this evening from a good friend. He and his family were in town and wondered if I wanted to come over to his sister's house and hang out.

Ah...yeah!

Matt and family was here from the midwest. They're visiting family and friends. The get together was quickly assembled. It was, in a word, cozy. The Danes have a name for cozy. It's called "hygge" and a cozy evening is "hyggeligt." It's such a perfect word and there's really nothing that compares in English. If I had to describe hygge, imagine sitting in a room in the evening, lights lowered--not blaring or overpowering--perhaps a small fire in the fireplace, and with a winter wind blowing outside, you're sitting in a comfortable chair maybe engulfed in a warm blanket drinking tea or hot chocolate chatting with loved ones. That's hygge and it's a wonderful thing.

Of course, you don't have to have all those things to have a hyggeligt evening. We were missing a fire, a winter wind blowing outside, blankets, or warm beverages, but we did have the most important thing--spending time with loved ones, chatting about life, about jobs, family, movies, hobbies, books, and music. We did that tonight. It was great.

When you're young--high school, college-aged--you have a lot of time to just hang out. We would go to friends's homes and talk, or go to a restaurant, spend time with each other, and talk. All that time was not wasted; it was well spent. I think it would be hard to explain to me back then that in the future, doing that same thing--just hanging out--would be so seldom done, and so richly enjoyed. Thanks Matt, Melissa, Darin, Lisa, Amy, Chase, and the kids for a hyggeligt time.

And they even had a Danish chandelier.