From an economic standpoint, people who hang Christmas lights make no sense? My sister-in-law starts decorating her Christmas tree and house on Black Friday. You can’t go to the bathroom in her without a motion-detecting Santa Claus accompanying your tinkling with music. What is the return on investment?
How many times have you heard the concept that we should have Christmas all year round? The feelings that are generated through the holiday season are like sunshine in the Northwest. It doesn’t happen much, you feel good all over when it happens, and you want to celebrate because you feel so good.
People pay thousands of dollars a year visiting therapists so they can feel good. Yet those same people will drive across town to see a neighborhood full of Christmas lights and then talk about it all week. The potential feelings of joy and comfort override the cost and time just to see the lights.
People like the way it feels to live in a community filled with decorated houses. They enjoy the drive or the walk through town seeing the lights, and they want to be part of it. They want to contribute and they don’t mind being noticed either.
The feelings of warmth and happiness are ubiquitous during Christmas because we give away things free without expectation of a return. An economist can’t make sense of the Christmas investment because the return is intangible.
Martin Seligman, the former president of the American Psychological Association wrote that the field of psychology has spent the past 100 years studying all about what doesn’t work in life and noted that the field is wholly unprepared to understand what makes people happy.
In an interview after World War II, Charles de Gaulle, then President of the French Republic was asked this question by a journalist:
“Mr. President, are you a happy man?”
“What sort of a fool do you take me for,” was his answer?
Are we so miserable in our world that a wise man is not permitted happiness?
Peace of mind and self-satisfaction are incredibly valuable to us, and we happily pay for them, sometimes contributing to a community in order to get them. But we don’t have to during Christmas because our neighbors are giving away happiness gratis.
Carolers sing, churches feed and house the poor, citizens voluntarily contribute money and food, and families come together all without an economic motive. That is if you don’t count happiness as an economic function.
Scrooge and the Grinch question the sanity of you who bother buying Christmas lights, putting them up, electrifying them, and then taking them down again? It don’t make no sense! After all, the economist wonders, what’s in it for you?
Recent studies on happiness may shed some light on this topic. It seems that people who seek to serve others are happier than people who seek personal pleasure.
It’s interesting to note that no one gets paid to put up Christmas lights, but some towns are awash in them. Is there a parallel to the broken window theory? The theory asserts that in cities with small acts of vandalism and unrepaired façades, crime goes up. The Christmas Light corollary might be that in towns where there’s a higher rate of profit-free community contribution, happiness and productivity go up as well.
The psychology of Christmas is the concept of giving away a gift with no expectation of return. It wasn’t any different more than 2,000 years ago on the world’s first Christmas.
Merry Christmas!
Fascinatingly interesting. Thank you for sharing. I was listening to a radio personality, Sean Hannity the other day and his counsel was instead of going into debt to buy Christmas gifts we should write a heart felt letter to those we live.
Brother Himmer I Enjoyed this insight extremely! It was one i was able to share with an investiagtor who is a Jahovahs witness and they enjoyed it. Just wanted to tell you thank you.
Thank you.