It’s cold outside. Your alarm brashly prods you awake. You sleepily reach for your phone and use it to take stock of the coming day: forecast of rain, again; a dozen new emails; several reminders about gifts to buy and events to organise.
Holiday season can be as stressful as it is lovely. So as much as it’s a time for giving, a time for appreciating loved ones and enjoying time together, you can also spare a bit of time to give something to yourself. Because we all need to indulge ourselves with a little gift from time to time.
Here are 5 ways to treat yourself this holiday season:
Take a spa break
As long as the “year” exists as a unit of time, we’ll always find significance in the ending of one and the beginning of another. And so December brings with it a sigh: perhaps because one marvellous chapter feels like it’s closing, or perhaps because we’ve had a year of stresses and we’re glad to give them some closure. Either way, it’s a good time to be conscious of our bodies and the tensions they’ve been carrying. Booking in for a little spa break can be the perfect way to start the new year: melt away the stresses of the year past and return revived, relaxed, and ready to again take on the world.
Read more about beautiful hotels for a spa break.
Indulge in a luxurious afternoon tea
Sometimes the small pleasures are enough to fill you with happiness and life. Taking a friend or indeed the whole family out for a sumptuous high tea is one of those pleasures that needs little introduction. After all, there’s the cherished act of wrapping your hands around a warm tea cup, the delight of freshly baked scones kissed with strawberry jam and clotted cream, and the pure ceremony of the whole affair. It’s amazing what just a few hours can do.
Read more about the best afternoon teas in London.
Embrace the cold at an Ice Hotel
Tempting as it is to run away from winter, sometimes there’s nothing more satisfying than to actually embrace the cold and find a way to get some pure pleasure and excitement out of it. Cosying up in a cloud-like Arctic sleeping bag beneath incredible carved walls of solid ice is one way to do that. With unique takes on the ice hotel concept available in places like Norway, Sweden, Romania and Finland, doing something special and luxurious doesn’t have to mean travelling to the opposite side of the world.
Read more about the world’s coolest ice hotels.
Head off on a glamping trip
How do you reconcile living in luxury with experiencing the great outdoors? Simple: by glamping. A portmanteau of “glamour” and “camping”, glamping includes the kind of set-ups where tents are climate-controlled, roll-out mattresses are covered with luxurious Egyptian cotton, and tree-houses come with private en-suites. Because the trend of glamping has been steadily growing, numerous sites have popped up right in the UK — though further-flung options also abound.
Read more about camping in luxury.
Buy yourself a timeless investment piece
We could wait a lifetime for someone to buy us our perfect watch or piece of jewellery; the kind of piece that we can wear time and again, that never dates and never tires. Or, we could just buy it for ourselves. Whether it’s an impeccable Swiss-made watch or a timeless piece of fine jewellery, at least you’ll know that — when the bow is untied and the wrapping falls away — the gift inside will be perfectly to your taste. And who could argue with that?
Read more about the latest luxury jewellery and watches.
