Feeling merry around the holidays and getting into “the Christmas spirit” may be down to individual differences in the brain, according to a new study.
The Christmas spirit is described by researchers as “feelings of joy and nostalgia mixed with associations to merriment, gifts, delightful smells, and copious amounts of good food,” – but it is an “elusive” phenomenon to study.
In the experiment, detailed in a report published in the British Medical Journal, researchers from the University of Copenhagen used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan brain responses to Christmas themes.
Twenty participants took part; 10 routinely celebrated Christmas, while the other 10 took no part in Christmas traditions.
Participants were shown images depicting Christmas themes while hooked up to the brain imaging machine. They were also shown neutral photos that had similar characteristics to the Christmas photos, but which had no Christmas themes.
The study found that those who practiced Christmas traditions showed increased activity in the sensory motor cortex, the premotor and primary motor cortex, and the parietal lobule when they viewed the Christmas photos.
Those areas, the researchers explain, are associated with spirituality, somatic senses, and facial emotion recognition, among other functions.
The study concludes that there is a “Christmas spirit network” that shows higher activation in those who celebrate Christmas.
The researchers say learning about the underlying functions of this network is important for understanding how people respond to holidays, and it could provide a “powerful tool in treating ailments such as bah humbug syndrome”.
The full research paper can be found here.
