From Neuroscience News:
Understanding how the Christmas spirit works could be a powerful tool in treating the ‘bah humbug’ syndrome.
Oh no! Stop them before it’s too late! The world needs more of the Bah! Humbug! Sydrome.
The study involved 10 participants who celebrated Christmas, and 10 healthy participants who lived in the same area, but who had no Christmas traditions.
All participants were healthy, and did not consume eggnog or gingerbread before the scans.
Each participant was scanned while they viewed 84 images with video goggles.
…
Differences in the brain activation maps from the scans of the two groups were analysed to identify Christmas specific brain activation.
Results showed five areas where the Christmas group responded to Christmas images with a higher activation than the non-Christmas group.
Ah, promising …
“Although merry and intriguing, these findings should be interpreted with caution,” they explain. “Something as magical and complex as the Christmas spirit cannot be fully explained by, or limited to, the mapped brain activity alone.”More.
Never mind, they’ve located it; that’s all the information we need.
So, on behalf of all the other people as well as myself who have been elbowed and shoved and nearly run over while trying to buy road salt and cat food—because these “Christmas Spirit” types are killing each other over half-price wrapping paper—I just want to say … it’s a spirit, right?
Then never mind the bah! humbug!:
Fetch the vacuum cleaner. – O’Leary for News
Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose, for this and many other great tips over the years.
All that said, if we kept it all closer to the following, we either wouldn’t observe Christmas or we would enjoy it more.