I am not sure if it is my imagination, but people seem to be putting up their Christmas lights and trees a few weeks earlier than normal this year, as if a desperate attempt to cover everything with glitter will fast forward time and get this darn year over with. I walked past one house on a dog walk recently and noticed they still had their Halloween pumpkins outside, albeit a little stinky and rotten, but the gnarled grimaces of the carved heads looked less menacing with the cheery twinkly lights and the light-up reindeer in the garden for company. I don’t blame those people who conjured up the spirit of Christmas and embraced advent back in early November – this year has been a weird one so hey, who said Christmas was just for December?
The thoughts of many Christmases past are captured in the instant those lights and trees go up. The tinsel that tells stories, the same old baubles that we dig-out each year, the comfort of sentimental familiarity. By donning fairy-lights, we instantly feel all is well with the world and for that one moment we can forget about pandemics, or what tier we should or shouldn’t be in. Instead, we are just excited little kids again, staring at the sky hoping that Santa will answer our wishes and make our dreams come true.
Memories aren’t necessarily made by design – we can’t curate what we will remember in the future. Feeling sand between your toes can conjure up a general memory of being on holiday, of being relaxed – but whether that was a memory from being in Crete or Cromer we forget the details, we just remember that the sand equates to holiday. The general mood evoked when we see the first fairy lights of the season, or when we stare into a flickering fire, watching shapes form and die, are drawn from a series of captured moments that are dotted throughout our lives and blended into nostalgia. A particular image, a whiff of perfume or a song spilling out of the radio will summon up a feeling in a second. I only have to hear a skylark as it flies upwards and onwards way above me, and I am immediately transported back to the summers of my childhood, where we would walk for miles across yellow fields seeking adventure. Or if I smell - or even see the words - ‘Crayola crayon’ I am straight back in my first primary school aged around 4, covered in poster-paint, collecting leaves and conkers from the playground making collages. No particular day, no special memory. Just a feeling. As kids, we take in the smells, sights and sounds of life and bank them into our memory to draw on in times of comfort as adults. We probably don’t know we are doing it, but little kids, on the whole, live life day to day just absorbing.
I have just started listening to a lovely new radio programme hosted by Sandi Toksvig where she chats to guests from her Danish log cabin. The show is called ‘Hygge’ which is a Scandinavian word that doesn’t have a literal translation into English, the word just summons up a feeling – it means ‘comfort, contentment and cherishing the simplest pleasures in life.’ To the Danes, friendship, cosiness and heartfelt hugs are pure hygge. I love the fact that the strength of hygge is that it is based on nothing but a feeling. You don’t have to buy into it, it is something most of us can achieve by simple pure appreciation of curling up on a cosy sofa with a cocoa and a good book or snuggling with a loved one in front of a fire. Uncomplicated mindful moments that we need to remind us to slow down. I wish I was Danish, or that I knew about the concept of hygge years ago. I am afraid the British in me has given me the stiff upper lip disadvantage, so it is something I am only now appreciating - as well as having to re-learn our childhood ability of natural mindfulness.
It is the little mindful moments that I have forgotten to partake in recently. My racehorse brain has been hell-bent on galloping through this year, desperate for it to finish and get it all over with, so much so I have become blinkered and have missed the small but important stuff. The captured moments. The little things. The feeling of hygge and the joy from the simple. The things that lift us, ground us and make us forget our woes. Christmas has crept up on me as I have had my eye on the future and have missed the now. I’ve forgotten how to just watch and listen. I have overlooked birdsong, the changing colour of the trees and the autumnal mists that hang in the air. I have become cross and cantankerous with those dearest to me, and don’t even listen to my own advice that I spout on here each week. I know what I have to do. I just keep forgetting to do it. It has taken a rotten old Halloween pumpkin juxtaposed with a light-up reindeer; and Sandi Toksvig to snap me back into the present and remind me what I really need is to do is tune back in, be more mindful and appreciate some simple hygge.
© The Real Tilly Fairfax
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