Lillördag Is My New Wednesday Practice…Who’s With Me?

Project 365, Day 41

This past Sunday, as Charles and I were driving back from standing in line for nearly an hour to get some fancy pants doughnuts (donuts?!?) in fancy pants Santa Monica, an episode of Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me came on the radio. As someone who is pretty bad at trivia, I find that the current-event focus of the show’s questions is something I don’t completely bomb at. One of the questions this time around revolved around Lillördag. I’d never heard of Lillördag. To be honest, I don’t even remember how to pronounce Lillördag. But what I didn’t forget was what it meant, and how I knew immediately upon hearing the explanation of it that I wanted to try building it into my life.

Lillördag is Swedish for “Little Saturday” and is a Nordic practice in which a weekday is treated like a reason to celebrate as you would on Saturday—typically Wednesday. According to this article I found very quickly via a Google search (hey it’s from BBC, it has some clout), “the expression comes from when servants and maids worked on Saturdays and had a weekday off instead.” In today’s world, it’s a very, very good excuse to de-stress midway through the week and break up the mundaneness of…weekday life.

I don’t know about you, but uh…sign me up?!? The funny thing is, I’ve taken to leaving Wednesday as my no-cook day mid-way, and I even recently said to Charles we should use Wednesday as a day to do whatever we each please without having to factor in the other. Meaning, if I want to watch To All the Boys I’ve Loved Part 12 alone, in bed, with a bowl of macaroni and cheese, no sign of Charles’ pushing to watch something else instead and no care in the world for what he’s eating for dinner, I want to be able to do that. No one is telling me I can’t do that of course, certainly not Charles, but our nightly practice is to eat dinner together and unwind together. Every. Single. Day. (Love you, love bug).

They pour pints of Guinness by candlelight, and take turns cooking at each other’s homes.

Lillördag, however, is maybe a little bit different…but I like it all the same! In the article I linked above, they gave a real-life example from a man named Harpo Adolfsson who decided with his friends that Wednesday would be the day they all got together. “They pour pints of Guinness by candlelight, and take turns cooking at each other’s homes. Their Danish colleague brings smørrebrød, while Adolfsson likes making homemade hamburgers and reindeer.” If that’s not the most Nordic thing I’ve heard in a while…but there’s likely a reason that Nordic countries regularly top the list of the world’s happiest people.

Sweden has words like lagom (“just the right amount”/”perfect-simple”) and fika (which means coffee break but is actually more about socializing), Denmark has hygge (a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment) and koselig (just being content, creating a pleasant environment, intimacy, warmth), Norway has utepils (to drink beer outside in nature…they have ONE WORD, it took me five to get across the same message). This region of the world is doing something right, my friends.

I 100% find myself living for the weekend now more than ever before.

Wednesday seems like the perfect day to have a little Lillördag. Three days into the work week when you’re already zonked but still have to sludge through two more days before a bit of freedom. I 100% find myself living for the weekend now more than ever before. It’s the only thing that breaks up the Groundhog Day effect of my current work from home life. Alarm, wake up, drag body to shower, drag body to kitchen for coffee/breakfast, drag body to computer to work, drag body to sofa to eat lunch while watching a little TV, drag body back to computer, drag body to bed to unwind for a minute after work, drag body to kitchen to cook dinner, drag body to table (who am I kidding…sofa again) to eat said dinner, drag body to bathroom to get ready for bed, drag body to bed to sleep, eyes closed, eyes open, DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN FOR FIVE DAYS IN A ROW.

Good LORD that was depressing. Do you see why we need Lillördag? I’ve never needed Lillördag more in my life than right now. To claim Wednesday as a night that we order in take out and do weekend things (which for us, means losing ourselves in a movie or chatting with friends or going for a drive or fitting in a little happy hour or me taking a long bath or basically anything but the sad chain of events from the previous paragraph), that I can happily commit to.

Who’s with me?

See you tomorrow, friends…after a little Lillördag for me.