Gezelligheid

Both of the houses I grew up in had wood stoves. These are not to be mistaken for fireplaces, which are largely ornamental and which let most of the heat go right out the chimney. Wood stoves, on the other hand, are little wood-burning furnaces that feature prominently in the living room of the house. Once the fire is built, you decide how long it burns by measuring the air that goes into it. So our primary source of heat over the winter was this wood stove. It was also our primary source of gezelligheid.

I don't pretend to have anything but an intuitive sense of what the Dutch adjective gezellig, or the related noun gezelligheid, actually mean. I don't speak Dutch, and don't really know any Dutch people, except one second cousin and my now deceased maternal grandparents. All I know is that the fire made our house cozy, and warmed fingers plagued by poor circulation. Add a family, hot cocoa, some roasting pumpkin seeds, a fresh cut Christmas tree, a box of ornaments dating from the 70's to two days ago, and a schlocky Amy Grant album, and there you have it: gezelligheid. (now for mentioning The Season out of it's given time, I realize that I am now due for a shotgun execution from Santa Claus himself. Bring it, Saint Nick. Bring it.)

I strongly associate gezelligheid with the cold months, and I have racked up a total of 4.5 cold months over the 6.5 years I've been married, having lived in California and Florida for most of that period. Now that's not to say that you can't have a gezellig experience when it's sunny out; it's just hard to cultivate a particular sense of belonging when, within reason, you can belong anywhere in the great sunny outdoors (not a term typically used of the Los Angeles metroplex, but I have a habit of using denotative meanings sometimes, in this case, the outdoors being whatever is not the inside of your dwelling.) In other words, I want a cold snap, a rainstorm, or a dreary night to drive me indoors. I want to feel safe and warm under my blanket, with Virgie, some S'mores Pop-Tarts®, and a Godzilla movie on VHS, while the world rages outside with a barrage of pointy icicles and an icy glassfull of cholera to blow in my direction.

Not tonight, world!