Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Cookies baking in the oven. Blankets thrown over a couch invitingly. Coziness and the holidays are deeply linked.
Retailers know this, as evidenced by the industry’s tendency to send out catalogs during the holiday season. Nestled between sheets of glossy paper are crackling fires, steaming mugs of hot chocolate, cozy sweaters and the promise that you, too, could be this happy if you buy the right products.
But more recently, another term has entered the U.S. lexicon to try and capture the unique feeling of contentment that often accompanies the holidays: hygge. Many peg 2016 as the year hygge, a word with Scandinavian origins, gained steam with U.S. consumers. That’s also the year Meik Wiking, CEO and founder of the Happiness Research Institute, published “The Little Book of Hygge.” So how does he define it?
“Hygge has been called everything from ‘the art of creating intimacy,’ ‘cosiness of the soul’ and ‘cocoa by candlelight’ and some of the key ingredients are togetherness, relaxation, indulgence, presence and comfort,” Wiking said via email. “The true essence of hygge in my view is the pursuit of everyday happiness. It’s basically like a hug, just without the physical touch.”
Hygge is not limited to the holidays, but Wiking notes that “winter is its high season.” Nowhere does Wiking mention products or purchasing, but attempts to sell or buy hygge have nonetheless sprung up. Consumers can buy “The Hygge Game,” purchase a “hygge gift box” or shop at stores that invoke the name of hygge like Hygge Life or Hygge & West.
During the holidays, a broader swath of retailers arguably begin selling the idea of hygge, whether or not they call it that. That’s partially thanks to the longstanding tie between Christmas and consumerism, which links the concepts of holiday spirit and togetherness with the buying of gifts. The tendency to gather and spend time with family during the season is very much a tenet of hygge.
“Hygge acts as an everyday driver of happiness and can be practiced in any form of community. And many spend a lot of time with their closest ones, it is especially those social connections that create the association between hygge and happiness,” Wiking said.
The world at large has already agreed that money can’t buy happiness (at least past a certain pay grade). But can you buy hygge?
Chestnuts (5 ounce package, $4.99) roasting on an open fire (tabletop fire pit, $36.99)
When exploring how retailers sell a concept like hygge at this time of year, which seems in many ways the opposite of consumerism, it’s helpful to take a look at Christmas, a holiday that is rooted in conviviality, togetherness and — shopping. A lot of shopping. A Deloitte report in October predicted holiday shoppers would spend an average of $1,652 during the season.
It’s been a long time since Christmas was viewed purely as the religious holiday it’s built around. Russ Belk, a professor of business at York University who researches gift-giving and materialism, says Christmas has been referred to as the first “global consumer holiday” because of the steady adoption of the event outside of its religious context. According to Belk, the tension between religious holidays and commercialism has been around for centuries.
Even in ancient Rome during the December celebration of Saturnalia, “there was criticism that people were feasting too much and were giving too much and were spending too lavishly at that time,” Belk said. “At the darkest time of year, we want something that's going to be cheerful, and the colors of Christmas and some of the rituals sort of bring that about, but at the same time, letting go of our purse strings and spending lavishly and celebrating and food and drink sort of goes along with that cheering ourselves up as well. And so there's sort of this tension.”
That became especially pronounced in the 19th century, according to Belk. Christmas celebrations were “almost dying out” in the United Kingdom, but then department stores started pushing the holiday with special merchandise and grand window displays. Now, elaborate store windows and merchandising is still a strategy for department stores looking to draw in shoppers during the season, even while some of the themes mirror the less consumerist aspects of the holidays.
A Macy’s window display last year, for example, showed a family of polar bears knitting their own apparel together, while the department store’s Herald Square flagship touted the message, “Give Love.” In fact, the entire theme of the windows was focused on “how we celebrate the holidays together with loved ones.” It’s a message that doesn’t necessarily line up with the astronomical level of buying that occurs — and is encouraged by retailers — in the fourth quarter. But it does certainly sound like hygge.
Many of the images and themes that retailers use to encourage purchasing during the season still pull from an older version of society — of a simpler, perhaps more hygge, time.
“The contemporary family is not what the 19th century family used to be, but that's what we like to think of in our imagination — that the horse is pulling the sleigh over the snow to grandma's house and that we’re trying to find the turkey and the mistletoe and everything you expect to associate with Christmas,” Belk said. “That stereotype goes a long way. And even though we might reject it on the surface, it can still get to us I think underneath and put us in the Christmas mood.”
When it comes to marketing, hygge is “photogenic and easy to use in promotion,” Veronika Zavřelová, a professor at the University of New York in Prague, wrote in an article in 2017. And indeed, Instagram accounts dedicated to living a hygge lifestyle are easily findable. They feature inspirational home decor setups, exquisite shots of coffees — and sponsored posts touting products that might make your life more hygge too.
“Who can resist flaunting images of eloquently arranged flowers and home-baked bread?” Zavřelová said. “The essence of ‘hygge’ can be portrayed with eye-catching objects, yet simplicity is key, so as not to give the impression of exclusivity and wealth.”
Hygge fits in cozily with some of the core values of the holidays, and functions as a good enticement to get shoppers spending, but, at the end of the day, hygge “is a feeling” influenced by togetherness, indulgence and comfort, according to Wiking.
“So you can buy some ‘hyggeligt’ accessories, but without the right feeling these accessories won't bring you Hygge,” Wiking said. “I think in general the younger generation have become less interested in material wealth. I think they are aware that their parents’ generation has been looking for happiness in the wrong places in that sense.”
The perfect gift
For The Hygge Company, selling “hygge” is about selling a certain type of lifestyle, and the company aims to “curate products that help generate a feeling of hygge,” owner Tracy Pickwell said via email. The company was formed during the pandemic as an ode to Danish living, mindfulness and a desire to embrace winter.
“There is so much noise around Christmas each year but hygge is not about materialism or hype. It is about stripping back to what is important,” Pickwell said. “Life is so busy for many, and we can often lose track of what is important to us. The pandemic reset this for so many and helped us to realign where our focuses should be and appreciate that less can be more.”
How does The Hygge Company balance that notion with running a retail business? Part of it lies in how the company acquires products and what it sells. The online shop features items like gratitude journals, blanket throws, diffusers and candles — items that are meant to augment the feeling of hygge.
“The perfect gift should be unexpected. It should be something that you've really looked into the person's heart and it’s something they didn't even know themselves but it's actually what they deeply wanted."
Russ Belk
Professor of Business, York University
The Hygge Company sources its products from places that match its brand values, like being environmentally friendly, and Pickwell describes its suppliers as “a small number of incredibly talented makers across the UK and Scandinavia ensuring we know the journey of each of our products from start to finish.”
In Zavřelová’s article, the definition of hygge is tied up with the idea of living the “good life” in a host of everyday ways. Zavřelová cites, for example, the ability to take a coffee break during the work day or a healthy work-life balance that supports meaningful time spent with family.
Hygge is “the ability to enjoy the manifestations of the ordinary life in its simplicity, of an unpretentious beauty and uncomplicatedness, of inner peace rather than outward excitement and of modesty rather than superficial luxury.”
In that sense, the list of potential “hygge” purchases would be minimal. Certainly the possibilities for self-indulgence and over-consumption at the holidays would not fit in. But what about gift giving?
“Studies show that spending on others was associated with greater levels of well-being than comparable purchases spent on oneself,” Wiking said. “The joy of making someone else happy could be the overlap.”
That doesn’t necessarily mean all gifts bring hygge, though. Belk, who has researched differences in gift giving globally, noted that in Japan certain holidays are “required” gifting holidays, where consumers are obligated to give something to their boss or teacher or other figures. Those gifts are “not particularly done out of love or goodwill,” whereas Christmas in Japan is an opportunity to give gifts to people of your own choosing, which makes the holiday and the presents more special.
The amount of thought that goes into gifting also influences the meaning of exchanging gifts. According to Belk, homemade gifts were once scorned as inferior to store-bought merchandise, but now “it’s delightful if someone makes us a gift rather than having one that they've just bought online.” The rise of marketplaces like Etsy speaks to that notion as well, as shoppers look for more unique products to give to their loved ones.
A report by Kearney last year found mixed feelings on gift-giving, with 66% of respondents under the age of 45 saying gifting is “at least a little wasteful.” But shoppers in that cohort also expressed interest in making their presents more personal and were twice as likely to make a present. If hygge is to be found in the holiday shopping rush, it’s in the details.
“The perfect gift should be unexpected. It should be something that you've really looked into the person's heart and it’s something they didn't even know themselves but it's actually what they deeply wanted — and that they would never buy for themselves,” Belk said. “And you've given it out of love and made a sacrifice.”
Belk referenced “The Gift of the Magi,” O. Henry’s story of Della and Jim, in which Della sells her hair to buy Jim a gold watch chain, only to discover Jim sold his watch to buy her a set of hair combs she could no longer use.
“It doesn't matter that the gifts are practically useless,” Belk said, “because symbolically they're saying everything that needs to be said.”
