In this mini-series on Why Christmas Makes Us Happy, we dive into the fuzzy feelings of Christmas and why they are present year after year. Today, we discuss associated emotional training.
Transcript:
Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day, through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life.
I'm your host Katie ...
In this mini-series on Why Christmas Makes Us Happy, we dive into the fuzzy feelings of Christmas and why they are present year after year. Today, we discuss associated emotional training.
Transcript:
Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in about 2 minutes a day, through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life.
I'm your host Katie Jefcoat, and in case you haven’t noticed by the sheer amount of glitter in the stores, the holidays are approaching. That got me thinking, with all the stress of shopping, the perils of winter weather, and sometimes spending way too much time with the in-laws, you would think people wouldn’t be so joyous…yet everyone seems to be more merry than usual.
I find the joy of the holiday season to be fascinating. I’ll be honest, Christmas is my favorite holiday, but today we discuss how it works on a more scientific level.
Psychology Today stated, “At Christmas, you feel joy because you associate good things with the holiday.” Like any other associative feeling, when you teach the brain that a particular trigger equates to a specific emotion, your brain will automatically respond similarly when that trigger is pulled again. So, if Christmas was always associated with good feelings throughout your childhood, Christmastime, in general, will elicit those same feelings every year.
To see if this idea was accurate, an experiment was performed in 2015 by Danish researcher Brad Haddock. The study examined two groups of people, one who celebrated Christmas and another who didn’t. The study showed images of Christmas to both groups; unsurprisingly, the ones who celebrated Christmas showed greater neural activity in their brain scan than those who didn’t. Whether you want to call it the Christmas Spirit, holiday cheer, or simply associated happiness is up to you, but science suggests it is present.
I can even see it in myself; there is something about twinkle lights that makes my heart dance a little. These associated images come to play in other areas too. For example, I absolutely adore matching family jammies - I plan for them, look at them, think about them year after year, and I love looking back at the photos in delight. It makes me so happy, and I had no idea why until now!
This idea got me thinking, and I have a few hypotheses on why Christmas time creates these consistent feelings of happiness that forge such associated neural pathways. Tomorrow, we dive into those ideas!
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Inspired by:
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-reboot/202012/the-neuroscience-feeling-christmassy#:~:text=At%20Christmas%2C%20you%20feel%20joy,you%20had%20as%20a%20child.
- https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h6266
