How to create a festive mood

New Year's mood in our minds is firmly connected with holiday attributes - New Year's tree, hung around the housegarlands, buying gifts, favorite New Year's films and musicals. However, even these attributes do not always help create a festive mood - they have become so familiar that they do not evoke those emotions that used to be. What should I do if even the tangerines do not please you?

As a child, half the charm of the New Year (if not most) was not in the holiday, but in his expectation. Remember: when you were young, time dragged much slower. The older we get, the faster days, weeks, months, even years pass by. Therefore, we do not have time to feel the approach of the holiday, because every year the course of time (according to our subjective sensations) is accelerating.

Can I somehow slow it down to bring back the festive mood from childhood? There are several ways, one of them - keeping the Christmas calendar. This tradition is observed by Catholics and partProtestants. It is associated with Advent - the waiting time, preceding the Nativity of Christ. Especially for children, a calendar with windows is made according to the number of days of Advent, each of which is hidden by a delicacy or a wish. Every day the child opens one window, counting the days remaining until Christmas.

You, too, can make such a calendar - only not Christmas, but the New Year. You can, of course, just cross out the days left before the New Year in the usual calendar, but agree - much better every day to pamper yourself with some pleasant trifle, hiding behind the next window. You can, incidentally, ask that surprises spread out on the windows of the calendar someone else - then you will not know in advance what "pleasantness" awaits you today.

Another way to create a festive mood -involve all the senses. The fact is that usually a holiday is associated mostly with "visual" flip-flops: dressed up Christmas trees, garlands hung everywhere, sparkling shop windows. But what about sounds, smells, tactile sensations?

Start by re-organizing your playlist. Make a playlist of your favorite songs that you associate with New Year holidays. By the way, the songs do not necessarily have to be sungabout Christmas, New Year and winter; it's enough that this or that song evoked from you pleasant memories connected with the New Year. For example, it can be songs that sounded on New Year's parties you remember, soundtracks from your favorite Christmas movies ...

Aromas will also help create a festive mood. Fill your home with the aromas of citrus and spices (cloves, vanilla, cinnamon): Arrange in the house vases with fruits, use aromatic lamps, candles and sticks, sachets with spices and pomanders (homemade fragrant balls from oranges and spices). And that the aroma of the holiday has always been with you, you can buy perfume with a "New Year" flavor (many perfume companies release special Christmas collections on the eve of the holidays).

Now it's time to tap into the taste. Every evening, coming from work, pamper yourself with a holiday batch. Gingerbreads are best: they can be stored for a long time, so you can bake gingerbread on weekends for a week ahead. You can also, after a hard day's work, treat yourself to mulled wine (preferably nonalcoholic, of course) or hot cocoa. By the way, in America it is customary in cocoa to put pieces of marshmallow - try and you (benefit, in some of our stores this overseas delicacy is already sold).

Actually, Our festive mood is not in what surrounds us, but in ourselves. Attributes of the holiday, tastes, sounds and aromas can help to awaken this mood, but it's up to you whether you are ready to let the feast into your soul.