The Danish art of doing nothing particular has become the fad of the day, spawning parodies and a learned essay on the Guardian. As we get ready for our hygge evening on 8 December, author Louisa Thomsen Brits defends the practice

At its best, hygge is a brief, restorative pause, an uncomplicated moment of relatedness, contented idling and ease. At its worst, it’s a vehicle for social control, a new subject for journalists to hawk opinion, and a marketing scam to sell us more stuff we don’t need. Its pleasures and pitfalls are articulated by contrast – when we hygger, we delineate a moment to relax, to experience a sense of belonging and togetherness that feels delightfully removed from the messy reality of everyday life, heightening our pleasure. We shelter each other from everything that exists on the periphery of the experience – from the rest of life with all its attendant problems and insistent variety. That mutual sheltering can be exclusive and short sighted.

 Hygge comes from a culture that focuses on tender values like trust, respect and mutuality. To maintain a hyggeligt atmosphere, we leave our cares at the door, avoid contentious subjects and suppress hostility for a while. But holding an easy ambience together can feel onerous, particularly for long periods. Most of us know the pressure to maintain a cordial atmosphere with family or friends at this festive time of year. There’s an element of self-control needed to maintain the fragile equilibrium of a happy, hyygeligt occasion that can lead to a suppression of valuable, inherent differences between people.

 So, like everything, hygge has a shadow side. In many instances, it is revealed by the dark, its pleasures intensified by withdrawal to a place of comfort and light in contrast to surrounding darkness, literal or metaphorical. Hygge is attached to emotive ideas of home and belonging, associated with family and, probably, love. At a time of global instability, when there is a growing desire to close the door on the world, politicians and salespeople are more than willing to manipulate us by appealing to our emotions, by harnessing hygge and our desire for security, familiarity and fellow feeling and steering them to their own ends.

It’s not altogether surprising that hygge has been voted one of the words of 2016 by both Collins and OED alongside Brexit and Trumpism. To varying degrees, all three are a reaction to a fear of the unknown. But hygge is mild and innocuous, a positive, universal impetus common to us all, found in small gestures, rituals and everyday routines that define and unite us. In its most unadulterated state, without the determined orchestrations of stylists, politicians, merchants of happiness and marketeers, hygge helps us articulate a desire to engage lovingly and intimately with the world around us. When we nurture intimacy, we increase our capacity to identify with each other and enhance our common life. That can only be a good thing.

Join us at the Idler Academy on Thursday 8th December to learn more about the Danish art of doing nothing from Louisa Thomsen Brits, author of The Book of Hygge – for tickets, please click here.