What Christmas Does to Your Brain
Every year it’s the same. There is a fine line between Christmas magic and Christmas madness. This becomes blurred in the course of the holidays. The statistics about family disputes and incidents in the domestic area paint a clear picture. Is the Christmas spirit a mirage that simply doesn’t keep pace with the reality? Or are our childhood memories deceiving us? Of course, things happen quite differently behind the scenes at Christmas, as children in particular experience as a result of their parents' laborious production. But maybe Christmas is just a psychological state of emergency that has to be overcome - every year. A number of scientific studies now provide us with reliable data on this topic. One thing right from the start: the madness we feel is not just a figment of our imagination. Find out exactly what Christmas does to our brains in this article.
1. Celebrating Christmas means loving Christmas.
Why do we still celebrate Christmas, even though its religious significance is now barely perceptible? Do we do it out of sheer habit? Researchers addressed this question, examining the human brain for its Christmas-related activities by means of MRI scans. The result, in a nutshell, is simple: People who celebrate Christmas show more activity in their brains when looking at Christmas images than people who do not maintain this tradition. The areas of the brain that begin to work in this process are used for spirituality, recognizing and processing emotions, and empathy. The bottom line of all these activities is that our stress levels drop, our feelings are more intensely perceived, and we arrive at a much more positive frame of mind. So a Christmas spirit with regard to the feast of love actually strengthens our emotional life and can put us in high spirits. In a way, the prospect of the upcoming feast triggers a kind of beautiful chain reaction in our brain that competes with the fairy lights on the Christmas tree. This high spirit is contagious, thank goodness, and can compensate for much of the hectic and chaos that the officially most wonderful time of the year demands of most of us.
2. Giving makes you happier than receiving gifts.
This acknowledged fact was also scientifically proven in a 2008 study. The test persons had the choice of buying a gift for themselves or for others with a certain sum. At the end of the day, their subjective feeling of happiness was measured. Those who had purchased a gift to pass on were significantly happier than any of the study participants who had given to themselves. But this result is not really surprising. Most popularly portrayed in the best-seller "the five languages of love" by Gary Chapman, we know that giving is more than the simple handing over of a present. Many people who do not want to or cannot do it in other ways express their feelings with a gift. Mainly, of course, the positive and romantic. However, there are also gifts that symbolize the exact opposite, such as knives or cacti, for example. As long as we are allowed to freely give a package to those people whom we can choose, gift-giving is the greatest joy of Christmas. This beautiful custom only becomes troublesome when it mutates into a chore or perhaps is even expected.
3. Christmas carols can promote hallucinations.
Everyone who works in retail has known this recently proven fact for a long time: If you have to endure the power play of Christmas carols all day long and are also constantly exposed to the noise and demands of crowds and artificial neon light without protection, you will wish for a padded cell or at least silence and seclusion from the Christ Child. The fact that Christmas carols literally drive us crazy has been scientifically proven in an unusual experiment. Volunteers were subjected to noises. Every time they thought they heard White Christmas, they were asked to press a button. One-third of the volunteers pressed that button at least once. They were all shown to have a higher susceptibility to fantastical constructs, which could be objectively measured and demonstrated by the Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale. So, as with all good things in life, the same is true for Christmas: The dose makes the poison. Those who can choose, give preference to quality over quantity here too and perhaps better avoid White Christmas until further notice.
4. Making music lifts spirits, even at Christmas.
Singing and making music have been proven to have a very positive effect on our mood. Christmas songs are no exception. According to a study from Michigan, singing Christmas songs together can not only strengthen social bonds between singers, but also improve their physical and mental well-being. The study of their neurochemistry was able to prove that when singing in a group, our stress levels decrease and the feeling of social connectedness increases. Further, the researchers found a significant decrease in the hormone ACTH, which serves as a marker for arousal and stress. In contrast, the release of the hormone oxytocin, which is also fondly referred to as the bonding hormone, increased significantly during singing.
5. Comparison makes us unhappy.
Not only at Christmas, but all year round, it is a bad idea to compare one's life and opportunities with those of other people. In connection with the feast of love, a consumer frenzy has developed in part because of this, which not only befuddles us, but also brings many people to their limits financially. Instead of gifts that come from the heart, there have to be more and more. The meaning and love that go hand in hand with the act of giving gifts, on the other hand, are lost in the flood of wrapping paper and mountains of garbage. We can't win this contest. Happy and content, on the other hand, is a Christmas for all those who can renounce any kind of retail terror. We truly need to call it quits with the avalanches of social constraints and obligations, otherwise they’ll eventually bury us.
Today’s Conclusion:
Christmas angel or Grinch? What all these studies show in sum, apart from the hallucinogenic effects of Bing Crosby and White Christmas, is perhaps not very surprising. Those who have known Christmas as a celebration of family and joy will remain loyal to its magic throughout their lives. Those who were denied this tradition as children, on the other hand, will find it difficult to develop a soft spot for it. Many adults have no real joy for Christmas. For them, it is mainly associated with stress, frustration and a lot of anger within the family. The lucky few, however, who relentlessly hold on to the magic of Christmas and the magical weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, will continue to do so. So Christmas is not only a feast for all the senses, but above all for those who have been allowed to led to this conclusion throughout their lives. Whether we go into Advent as a joyful Christmas angel or as a grumpy Grinch was therefore, like so many things, not under the Christmas tree, but in the cradle. That's it for today.