BBC Radio 4 2016-10-22

With autumn well and truly here, it’s easy enough to look upon the darkening days ahead with a sense of dread. Summer feels like a distant memory, and unlike the recently departed swallows, most of us can’t just up and leave the prospect of winter behind.

So perhaps we can learn something from the Danes this year, who are often cited as being among the happiest people on Earth, despite the cruelty of their perishing winters.

The Danish concept of hygge is all over the lifestyle pages of our media this autumn, perhaps for good reason - as hygge is all about a way of living more fully - more wonderfully, in fact! - from within the weather, the darkness, and whatever’s before us, instead of forlornly dreaming of better days to come, and wishing we were somewhere else instead.

With hygge, while there’s no direct translation into English, it’s about finding a richer connection to the present moment, especially by appreciating the simpler pleasures - such as lighting candles, putting on your warm socks, making a hot drink, settling more deeply in.

Which I find l rather lovely, as well as spiritually intriguing.

The cynic might dismiss the hype around hygge here as a fad, and it will, like everything that’s good, be commercially exploited, of course; but as one broadsheet reported this week, while “hygge is being sold by the yard this Christmas ... in its native habitat it is not a trend, but a way of life.”

And that matters, because it’s not, ultimately, just a soft-focus stylised add-on for the winter, but a philosophy that celebrates (for instance) giving and receiving, connecting with others, creating a meaningful context in which to find rest, and ultimately being more fully here.

And that resonates for me very helpfully with the spiritual principle of incarnation - of showing up fully to the whole of life, not just the nicest parts. To all of its seasons, if you like.

I suppose the one danger of hygge is that we could see it simply as a way to focus on our own soulful sense of well-being. Incarnational spirituality, which flows from the example of Jesus, also reminds us there can be a cost to count, a price to pay, in entering the darkness. In Christian belief it’s the route to selfless love.

But, with that in mind, I think hygge can inspire us - as we enter these darker days of this turbulent year - to remember that we can each play our part in bringing some beauty, connection, and warmth to bear, wherever we find ourselves, and especially from within the starkest of days.

We can light our hygge candles; but we can also be a flame.

And that, for me, makes the prospect of winter a brighter one.