Christmas is almost here and everyone is getting either excited or anxious about it and scientists believe that the Christmas spirit is in your brain.
- The bah humbug syndrome is real and connected to our brain functions
- The Christmas spirit can trigger a certain type of activity in our brain
- A Grinch might not hate Christmas, but they sure don’t think much of it
The holiday fever is everywhere. Stores are filling up with all these great items (or not) you’ll spend all your money on. Holiday sales make you become a gift hunter and everyone is decorating their houses, their Christmas trees and basically everything else that goes into the ‘deck the halls with boughs of holly’ category. All in all, the Christmas spirit is everywhere, whether you like it or not.
And speaking about it, there are many people who really dislike this holiday. Obviously, people perceive them as “Grinch” or “Scrooge”, the very infamous characters, who hated or wanted to ruin Christmas. Of course, it doesn’t mean these people want to ruin Christmas, but they just don’t see what the big deal is. They don’t get excited over decorations, or presents and carols can actually become quite annoying.
A team of Danish scientists conducted a study using twenty subjects. Ten of them celebrated Christmas, while the others, having different religions, did not. The subjects were asked to fill out some questionnaires on Christmas related feelings, as the first stage of the study.
In the next stage the participants underwent an MRI while watching different images which were both related and non-related to the holiday. Apparently, the pictures related to the holiday triggered some sort of neurologic activity in the Christmas group people. The second group did not experience any changes in their brains’ activity.
It looks like the brain was activated in an area and a way which is associated with emotions and spirituality, the same feelings you experience when you spend time with your loved ones.
The bah humbug syndrome is sort of the opposite of the Christmas spirit, or not necessarily the opposite, but simply, its absence. The people with this syndrome, which is named after the famous expression used by Ebenezer Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol”, don’t experience the same feelings towards this holiday and everything related to it as opposed to the people who enjoy celebrating Christmas.
All in all, we should stop judging people who don’t get Christmas or call them “Grinch” as it is clear that their brains refuse to react to anything that is related to this holiday. Remember: they might not hate Christmas, they just don’t care about it.
Image source: www.bing.com
Mitchiepoo Girtski says
And how do you think the Christmas Spirit got there? Media, advertising and religious fanatics have spawned all things irrational as acceptable. If you sit in the woods long enough and gaze upon a stump you can convince yourself that you are looking at an animal only if you want to believe. Again, irrational behavior. People born into poverty and malnutrition who have never experienced the social retardation of the “holiday season” have no concept of your so-called Danish study. You people live in such an incredible vacuum.