Hyggeween Owls

Cute Owls That Kids and Adults Can't Resist

Many people celebrate Halloween today. It’s an Americanized celebration of All Hallows’ Eve, which very few people celebrated just 20 years ago. But at its core, it’s a spookier celebration of evil spirits, death, wickedness, and darkness. A strange, occult festival that many have embraced as something fun—but why do we have it, anyway?

Among other things, this has to do with the fact that there has been a global, media-driven desensitization campaign over the past 40+ years. Both Hollywood and the entire celebrity machine have lulled most people into a kind of cultural hypnosis. We’ve been thoroughly immersed in Americanization, and that has only made it easier to fall for traditions that don’t belong to our culture at all—and Halloween is just one of them.

I remember the first time I experienced Halloween. It was a little over 25 years ago, and it wasn’t in Denmark or mainland Europe. It was in England, where I was studying in London. Back then, it was a completely different celebration—it was more aesthetic than scary, which is something you can’t say about how people celebrate it today, when I often feel really queasy as I walk past my neighbors’ houses or go to the supermarket. Where blood, zombies, mummies, blood-dripping dolls, and severed limbs, bleeding fingers, and who knows what else are on full display for everyone to see.

This is what Halloween has become in the 2020s, and it’s all happened in less than 20 years. The darker, more macabre, and more disgusting, the better. Driving through American suburban neighborhoods is downright uncomfortable. Skeletons and zombies several meters tall stand there, moving about with repulsive, satanic lights in their eyes. Somewhere in Connecticut, on a trip from Boston down to Orlando, we saw that an entire street had been transformed into a horror street, where these several-meter-tall monstrosities just stood there, swaying and moving, covered in blood, murder weapons, lights, and tons of fake spiderwebs. Everyone along the road seemed to have gone all-in on evil, and it gets so disgusting that you have to tell your kids to cover their eyes while you sit there sending prayers into the ether to avoid being embraced by the enemy.

I feel it’s completely wrong to teach our children to glorify all that is evil, all that no one wants; I think we need to be very cautious about what we invite into our lives. It’s not even a Danish or European tradition, and yet people have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker after years of marketing and desensitization of adults and children.

When I went to my first Halloween party, the place was beautifully decorated with cheerful or whimsical pumpkin lanterns; there were lots of candles, fun cakes, and other fall-themed decorations. Today, it’s a mix of horror, gore, and zombies, and it’s celebrated on a much larger scale than ever before. It’s a collective celebration of eeriness and evil. It has nothing to do with the Martha Stewart-style Halloween of the past—which is what I was introduced to back in London a long time ago—when glittery pumpkins, fairy houses, and a few cookie bats were the wildest things imaginable.

But that's how the enemy always starts things off—slowly but surely. With a gentle touch, you're lured into the web, and before you know it, you're completely caught up in it.

However, I’ve decided that we can certainly celebrate something else—something more important. After all, why not go against the grain? We celebrate Jesus every day, and with the arrival of fall, the cozy atmosphere and the delicate beauty of the season are a natural part of creation—and that is worth celebrating, rather than the gloom and evil that are as undesirable as anything can be.

So when everyone’s running around outside booing, we shut that out, light some beautiful candles, decorate with fall motifs, and bake sweet and beautiful cakes. I call it Hyggeween—a cozy celebration of fall and the beauty of creation. Celebrating what’s good and beautiful, warm and loving, instead of the opposite. A celebration that doesn’t desensitize our children into accepting evil as something good and fun. We don’t need any more evil or gloom in this world—our progress (or decline) has created more than enough of that already.

Our world is practically bursting with it. We need Jesus, peace, tranquility, candlelight, warmth, beautiful pumpkins, hearty soups, delicious pies, and a brownie owl. So last night, I stood there baking brownies with the kids and decorating them. It takes time to make the little owls, but it’s so much fun to see how different their expressions turn out—it’s as if they have their very own cake personalities. I’ve shared the recipe below; it’s easy and really delicious, and you can make them for a birthday, too. The most important thing is to find some good-quality chocolate buttons that aren’t full of junk—I managed to do that, and here’s the result: our little Hyggeween Owls, perfect for any cozy occasion.

I hope you’ll feel inspired to make some cozier owls this Hyggeween. I think it’s important that we spread more “hygge” than “uhygge” during this time—it seems like our world needs it. Have a wonderful Hyggeween!

Have a blessed day!

Love

P.S. All posts on this blog are written and photographed by Belle Frost; no AI was used to generate content, and all copyright belongs to Maison Frost.