Create Harmony

Cozy Winter Gatherings

• Sally • Season 1 • Episode 157

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The holidays were joyful, but the noise was loud and the rooms were packed. Now comes the quieter stretch of winter, and we’re choosing to make it a season of small circles and steady warmth. We explore how intimate gatherings—designed for rest, not spectacle—can lift mood, protect energy, and keep community at the center of winter well-being.

We start with micro events that are easy to host and even easier to enjoy: a crockpot soup night with a neighbor, a coffee-and-connection hour with two friends, or a simple tomato soup and grilled cheese date that turns catching up into a meaningful ritual. For something tactile and playful, raclette and fondue bring people together around a shared grill and a leisurely pace, creating a cozy dining experience without pressure. If food isn’t your thing, try non-food options: stream a gentle yoga class at home, bundle up for a winter walk to chase sunlight and fresh air, or schedule a quiet phone chat and treat it like an appointment worth savoring.

We also make space for creative and virtual connection. A Zoom book club with friends in other states, a low-key game night with mahjong or dominoes, or a local workshop can widen your circle while respecting winter’s slower rhythm. Along the way, we practice a winter-positive mindset.  These simple habits turn cold months into a restorative chapter rather than something to endure.

Ready to design your own season of cozy, low-key community? Listen now, then subscribe, share with someone who needs a gentler winter, and leave a review to tell us your favorite micro gathering. Your ideas might inspire our next episode.

To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to the Create Harmony Podcast, and this is a place where we set an intentional rhythm. We incorporate everyday gratitude and we listen to God through our imagination. It's a place where we slow down and savor life's blessings and we really focus our attention on celebrating small joys. So if you're craving some stillness, creativity, and maybe a gentler way of noticing goodness all around you, you are in the right place. We are so glad you're here, and I know that you will be too. So this is episode 157, and I am your host, Sally Burlington. So today we're going to talk about winter gatherings, like times that we get together with friends during the winter. And this is part of our ongoing winter well-being series, and that's a place where we spend a number of weeks really focusing on how we lift our spirits, how to kind of shore ourselves up during the colder, darker winter months. And we're really being intentional about making a mindset shift here. We're putting our focus on the things that bring us joy and make us feel good during a season of the year that can be a little more harsh. For me, winter, I have said before, is a little more brittle and it's more difficult for me to relax into comfortable, joyful, peaceful living. So winter well-being is all about that. So we're gonna start our discussion of winter gatherings by discussing the fact that kind of where we are on the calendar is right after the holiday season. So if your holiday season is like mine, you had lots and lots of gatherings. You had things at church, you had neighborhood parties, company holiday events, all sorts of places to go, people to see, and those were fun. And if those holiday gatherings, if if the ones you went to were like mine, they're usually pretty crowded with lots of people, lots of noise, there's talking, there's laughing, maybe even a little dancing involved. And this is fun. It's really great. There's nothing wrong with it at all. But once we get beyond that into our winter season, it seems like to me that smaller, more intimate gatherings are in order. Now, my introverts are probably loving this. And those of you who are extroverts, I'm not suggesting that we don't see each other throughout the whole winter. I'm suggesting that we balance all of our robust holiday events with some smaller, more low-key things as we journey through the winter season. And let me emphasize, community is an important part of well-being. That's why we're talking about gatherings here during our winter well-being series, because we are trying to find the greatest level of well-being. So discussing ways that we can connect with others while still resting and restoring ourselves seemed like an important thing to do. So the basic idea here is to think small or come up with some micro events that can fill you up without overwhelming your senses. For example, maybe you want to host a soup night and you want to invite the neighbors across the street, or just a few friends, just a small gathering. It's pretty easy to find simple recipes for soup that you can just pop in the crock pot. Or if that's not your jam, you can buy the soup. Just buy it and heat it up. You can usually find pretty good pre-made soups at your grocery store or your big box store or in our area, maybe Trader Joe's. Just source some kind of soup. I'm not talking about canned soup. I'm talking about like pre-prepared things and just heat it up. And then you can have people over. It can be one friend. I had a friend who invited me over one night for tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and it was just the two of us, and it was awesome. We had a great time and we caught up and it was incredible. So just think about it like that. Or maybe if soup is not your thing, maybe you want to host a coffee and connection event and you just invite, you know, three girlfriends or your colleague at work or your sister or somebody that you don't get a chance to connect with, just make a pot of coffee or have some K cups and just enjoy each other. The most important aspect here is to keep it simple. Remember, this is a season of more quiet rhythms. And keeping these gatherings cozy and simple, that'll give you a sense of warmth, a sense of calm. It'll be restorative and it will not drain your resources. So one of the events we've hosted in the past, even with just family, we've done it with just just when our um girls were home, is called Ray Clette. It comes from the Scandinavian area of the world. I've talked about it before during winter winter well-being. And it involves a little Rayclet grill, similar to Fondue. It's just like a little flat grill. And underneath the grill, it has these little like skillet type things. And the menu is all about cheeses and meats and vegetables, and you cook it all together. So it's like a communal situation, a lot like Fondue, like I said. So you're over there cooking your mushrooms and melting your cheese on it, and someone else is cooking their little sausage and putting some more cheese. I think it's very cheese forward. So we've done that. We have a little Ray Clec grill and we've done that for lots of different combinations of people. And it can, it's very casual and comfortable, and it's a nice way to gather in the winter. So you might think about something like that, or you could go to a fondue restaurant. If you have a fondue place in your city, just go out with a couple of friends and do that. Now, if you want to have small gatherings that are not related to food, most of the things we've already talked about so far have surrounded some sort of food event, but maybe that's not what you want to do, but you could invite a friend over for yoga night. Now you can stream all sorts of different yoga workouts on YouTube. So you don't have to have it nothing fancy. You don't have to call in a yoga teacher. You just set up a small area like a yoga studio. Maybe you plan to have a cup of tea together afterwards. It could be gentle yoga, flow yoga, something that's small and intimate. I love yoga and I love to go to yoga studios, but this time of year sometimes it gets super crowded and I feel like I can't even really extend my arm out without almost touching the person next to me. So having a small yoga night with just a couple of friends is appealing to me. So you might want to think about that as a winter gathering. Now, if you don't feel comfortable hosting something in your home, maybe you want to just invite a friend for a winter walk. You could bundle yourself up and you may have to schedule around some winter weather, but getting outside in the winter and breathing the fresh air, seeing the sun, even if it's just a little bit of a glimpse of the sun, that can be very healing and gives you a wonderful reset. So maybe just call one friend and have a winter walk, get out and about. Or you could gather with friends via Zoom. And I know you're probably thinking, I don't want to go back to the COVID days, but just stick with me here. Maybe this is something you want to add into your gatherings. You don't have to prepare, you can blur your background, you can even wear your cozy pants. I'm in a book club with some friends that I went to college with. And the reason we meet over Zoom, we meet every other month and talk about a different book. And the reason we meet over Zoom is because we live in all different states. So that would provide you the opportunity to connect with people that you don't see all the time and allow you to have a winter gathering that's a little bit more intimate. This is a great time of year for you to host a game night. Maybe you're into mahjong. I know lots of people are into it. That's very intimate. It's just a small group of people getting together. If mahjong is not your thing, you could do dominoes or catchphrase. Any kind of game, it can be done with families, and it's just a little bit smaller, more low-key idea than a big holiday gathering. And now your connections in the winter do not always have to involve groups. Remember that I said a winter what with just one friend. If you have a friend that you haven't had a chance to be with or catch up with, maybe you want to schedule a phone chat with them. Maybe you want to call them. And you can really be intentional about this. Make it an event, schedule it on your calendar with the friend ahead of time. Maybe fix yourself a warm drink or a glass of wine and just sit down, light a candle, and you're gonna have this time of connection with somebody that you really care about that maybe the rest of your year is too busy for you to actually sit down and connect with that person. So winter is your perfect time to do it. Another idea is that you could take a workshop. I teach workshops throughout the year, pop-up workshops. We're getting ready to have a vision board bingo workshop coming up next week. And this could be something you could go uh look for a place in your local city that teaches, you know, a crafting workshop or something at your local hardware store. Just if you Google local workshops, there will be some offering for you. And you could connect with new people in that way and learn a new skill. You could do wine and design or something like that. There are lots of ways that you can find community in a winter gathering that really align with the aspects of winter well-being that we've been fo focusing on. So connecting with others, I mentioned this earlier. It's definitely part of hookah. It's part of being cozy. And the bottom line is this you should just consider how you want to adjust the tone of your gatherings while we're in winter. Think of the things you like to do, whatever it is, if it's yoga, if it's crafting, if it's woodworking, if it's reading, think of all the things that you like to do and then invite someone into that in some way. Just give that some thought. So hopefully this gave you some good ideas to get started on your winter gatherings. For our closing today, I'm gonna read an excerpt from a book called How to Winter by Carrie Liebowitz. And this is sort of in line with what we've been talking about, definitely in line with winter well-being. It's a description of a winter practice of talking up the season, and it goes like this. I love the crackle of ice on the sidewalk, or the rain smells so clean. Commenting on indoor coziness is also allowed. Saying, it feels so good in here upon entering somewhere warm and has a completely different effect than it's so gross out. If you encounter winter bashing, try affirming while while rebutting. Yes, I love soup season. Yes, it has been freezing, but I love my fireplace at this time of year. How does trying to make authentic winter positive chit-chat change your experience of the season? Make your own seasonal calendar. Sit down and divide the winter into at least three parts. What designates early, middle, and late winter for you and where you live? How will you know when each mini season has arrived? If you want, you can even make your own five to seven micro season calendar to elaborate on the idea. We drink the first hot chocolate, we shop for Christmas presents, we celebrate grandma's birthday. This is a great activity to do with kids. Enlist a buddy. Ask a friend to be your partner in winter appreciation. Each day, text each other a seasonal highlight, one thing you've enjoyed about winter weather, or something that the cold darkness facilitated for you that day. Now, before you go, I want to remind you that if you are local to North Carolina, we would love to see you at our Vision Board Bingo workshop. It's this Thursday, January 29th at 7 p.m. at Petal and Pink Mental Wellness Boutique. If you want to go to myCreateHarmony.com, you can get more information about how to register, and we hope to see you there. And until next time, peaceful,

Contributor

Sally Burlington

Host