A Season of Togetherness
Reflections on finding joy and solace in community during the holiday season.
Dear Lazies,
The holiday season is here — different for each of us. For some, it’s a time to reunite with friends and family, savouring the joy of doing absolutely nothing. For others, it’s a lonely period, even as cities glow with festive lights, the air fills with the scent of mulled wine and cinnamon, and shop windows compete in their dazzling decor. For many members of Lazy Women, who are migrants, the holidays can feel far from joyful.
As we close out the year, we send you our warmest wishes and greetings, hoping you find time to rest and recharge. 2024 has been quite a ride, and we’re so glad you’ve been with us through it all. :)
This issue features illustrations from Fdor and Bogi Varga.
Your Lazies
This festive season, we asked our community members to think of what ‘community’ means for them and share their thoughts!
Lauren, Lazy Women Editor & Author:
Given that I'm such an analogue person, it’s been a real surprise to me how in recent years my sense of community has grown in the online space. This probably first started with Lazy Women, a community I was welcomed into in 2021, where I instantly felt a connection to like-minded woman from places I'd heard of but never been - and at that time couldn't travel to even if I wanted to! - and yet who felt so close.
The support and encouragement I've received from the Lazy Women community has felt really meaningful, whether it be getting to know new acquaintances, learning more about different experiences through reading interesting articles, and feeling like I was part of something pretty ground-breaking with the 'Making it in Western Europe' podcast series. Opening up conversations around privilege, bias and misconceptions, in a bid to spread more understanding and kindness, is such an important part of community.
Writing for Lazy Women grew my confidence in thinking I may have a way with words, leading me to set up my own Substack newsletter last year - which in itself has borne a whole new community of a different kind. There I find myself often in community with women a decade or two older than I am. Having the opportunity to connect with them offers a sense of belonging in a special way. My life wouldn't be what it is without all these wonderful communities being part of it.
That said, this month I am very happy and grateful to be back at home with my OG community; the family that raised little Lauren to become the me I am today.
Julie, Project Manager & Newsletter Editor:
This year, I felt like a magnet for various communities — and it was truly magical. Being heard, seen, and appreciated is incredibly valuable; we shouldn’t underestimate it. From book clubs to media, it’s been an active and exciting time. Let’s just say I’ve never felt a lack of social connections, which, at some point, even made my friends call me a ‘socialite.’ Naturally, I had to add it to my Instagram bio!
On a more serious note, meeting people who are not your age, who come from different cultures and countries, and whose native language isn’t the same as yours is such a powerful way to grow and learn. I’m grateful to have had many such opportunities in 2024. I’m especially grateful to have joined the Lazy Women team — it’s such a joy to work on projects I truly like and believe in.
This holiday season, I’ve planned a cultural program for myself. I’ve always found it better than staying at home, dwelling on things, and inevitably succumbing to the holiday blues.
To all emigrants: don’t get stuck in a bubble of people from your own country. You also don’t have to wait for people to join you in anything! Expand your horizons and go further — you won’t regret it.
Poppy, Newsletter Editor:
Driving home for Christmas?
To go or not to go home for Christmas, that is the question. Or at least that is what has been playing on my mind the last couple of months. I come from the UK and Christmas has always been a constant source of friends, family and food. It’s true, this time of year has always fit the festive cliche for me (minus the snow) however, now living in the Netherlands, it’s been thrilling to make the decision this year to not return to where I grew up. I won’t lie, it's incredibly comforting to remain in your chosen home with your chosen family rather than enduring several days of excess and stress all to keep certain traditions alive. Living abroad also opens oneself up to new experiences including spending the festive season with friends who don’t celebrate certain religious moments like Christmas. What a treat to step away from the overly joyful and forced fun one can endure for the sake of tradition because you know… it’s the most wonderful time of the year. This year, my partner and I hosted a mini-Christmas on 22nd December bringing together those who won’t or can’t go home for the festivities. With a potluck of Iranian, Italian, Brazilian, British Dutch and Ukrainian dishes, this certainly was a Christmas to remember and we’re already talking about doing it again next year.
For our Lazy Women Founder Zsofi, her usual Christmas tradition is to host an in-between party for her friends in Budapest between 25th-31st December. Like her, many of them also live abroad therefore, this annual meetup provides respite from family time and an opportunity to reconnect over leftovers from festive meals past. Choosing to do something else and not return home for the holidays will always be exciting because change is always good! However, Zsofi will, of course, miss this moment the most. As usual, the holiday season seems to make us feel all the feels about every decision made and somehow seems to have more meaning behind the action even though it’s just another day of the year?
For those who did celebrate, did you uphold old traditions or start new ones? Is going back home to family a non-negotiable or did you escape the cold for warmer days somewhere else? And for those who wanted to go home but couldn’t… we’re thinking of you.
In December, we want to take a step back and remember what 2024 was for Lazy Women 👇
To start with, we had a beautiful 2024 Lazy Women Calendar featuring 12 talented artists from our community published!
Lazy Women participated in a Feminist Festival in Budapest; joined a workshop in Tartu (organised by DeStructura and Reset! Network); moderated a panel on ‘Gender & Feminism in Eastern Europe’ in Bratislava’s Goethe-Institut; learned at ‘Designing Europe’s Media for All’ event in Paris and represented Lazy Women in Sarajevo at the Media Innovation Festival and in Brussels at the Check! Europe conference! You can call it a Eurotour! :D 🇭🇺🇪🇪🇸🇰🇫🇷🇧🇦🇧🇪
HUGE podcast project called ‘Making it in Western Europe’ was released. A season of 8 stories with 3 bonus episodes! And…a new podcast series, ‘Lazy Chats’ started! How cool is that!
Paris was rich in offline events! Here, we hosted ‘The Clitoris Act’, a comedy show on Women’s Day in Paris, collaborating with a comedy duo ‘Clit Comedy Club’, Anshita and Mari. In summer, we invited you on a traditional Lazy picnic and in winter - on a tufting workshop (but more on this one later ;))
17 articles were published on our website! Go check them out!
3 beautifully curated Lazy playlists are waiting for you here
And last, but not least, in 2024 we managed to make our newsletter regular on Substack, publishing it every single month! We’re very proud and happy with the results <3
We share all this news on our Instagram. Make sure to follow us not to miss anything (and help us reach 6k ;))
The pre-2025 Lazy List
Now we’re finished reminiscing, let’s take a look into the future and predict what could be in store for the Lazy Women Community…
Stellar reading recommendations - Bearing in mind our newsletter team is mad for reading, you don’t need to worry about what to read going into the new year. Have a couple of hours spare over the next couple of days? Why not try Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. There is nothing better than a subversive noir novel to compliment the moody December weather we’re experiencing.
Meetups - Keep an eye out for more Lazy Women community meetups in 2025. Our budding online community is a great source of sharing and discussions and we want to continue this offline, in person together.
Upholding a realistic mindset - Let’s leave the ‘new year, new me’ bullshit in 2024 and let’s choose realistic and manageable goals to instill kinder habits and continue better practices from the year just gone.
P.S. This doesn’t have to begin on 1st January… adding an arbitrary deadline only makes it more hard on yourself.
On December 8, we held our Lazy Tufting Workshop in Paris, inviting Olga, a Greek artist based in the Netherlands!
Each of the participants had a chance to learn about tufting technique and create their very own Christmas ornaments :) We had a lovely time and hope you liked this, too - thanks for making it to the workshop despite the ever-lasting rainy days in Paris!
You can check how it went here! And attaching the pictures, of course:
Special thanks to our community manager Frosso for making this happen and to our member Ikya for being so helpful at the workshop 💖
We received messages asking us whether we’re going to organise more workshops like these - we’re surely planning more community meetings next year, so stay tuned and follow us to be the first to know! ;)
And finally a big thank YOU! for subscribing to our Lazy Women newsletter. We hope you’ve enjoyed all the essays, recommendations and illustrations of the past twelve months and are looking forward to more laziness in 2025. Interested in supporting us? We’re always looking for new writers and artists to volunteer their time and creativity into this project. Please respond to this email and/or share with those who you think could make a good match.
p.s. Our newsletter team is fully volunteer-based. We work on every issue throughout the whole month—picking a topic, collecting submissions and illustrations, writing, and editing.
If you like what we do, you can support our work here 👇