December 8, 2025 • 15 mins
Why does Christmas feel so magical—and how can we bottle that feeling for our families? In this episode, Justin and Kylie unpack the science behind Christmas joy and reveal the seven psychological drivers that make the season feel warm, connected, nostalgic, and full of wonder.
From sensory anchors to collective effervescence, discover how small tweaks to your traditions can transform a stressful season into a slow, meaningful, joy-soaked one. This is your cheat-sheet to creating the kind of Christmas your kids will remember forever.
KEY POINTS
- Relationships are the heart of Christmas—intentional togetherness boosts joy and belonging.
- Anticipated joy (hello Advent calendars) fuels dopamine and lifts mood weeks before the day arrives.
- Sensory anchoring—smells, sights, tastes—creates powerful nostalgia and emotional connection.
- Collective effervescence elevates community energy when everyone enters the same seasonal rhythm.
- Permission for wonder gives adults a rare chance to play, imagine, and embrace childlike magic.
- Savouring and gratitude turn small moments into the big memories our kids carry into adulthood.
- Applying these principles can fix a stressful or disappointing Christmas and make it joyful again.
QUOTE OF THE EPISODE
“Christmas is culturally sanctioned slowness—and if we savour it, the joy multiplies.”
ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS
- Prioritise connection over productivity—plan moments of slow, intentional togetherness.
- Create anticipation with rituals that build excitement (tree, lights, Advent, small traditions).
- Use sensory anchors—scents, recipes, music, decorations—to spark nostalgia and joy.
- Lean into wonder: play, imagine, and embrace the magic your kids already feel.
- Savour moments in real time—pause, breathe, and let the season be slow.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Just over two weeks to Christmas. Hello, welcome to the
Happy Families Podcast. I'm really excited today's episode. It's a
little bit different today. We're getting excited about psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Kylie.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I can feel your thrill emanating around the podcast studio,
just hearing the words. You know, it's almost Christmas, right, Yes,
this is what I love to do across Christmas. I
love to pick up psychology textbooks literally textbooks, and I
can read so much of them across this nice quiet time.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Can you keep it to yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I will after this very brief episode of The Happy
Family's podcast where I share with you the psychology of
Christmas magic. Why is it that we and our children
get so excited about Christmas? What are the things psychologically
speaking that are sources of Christmas joy?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Why does everything have to be scientific?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Because when you understand this stuff, you can actually literally
engineer Christmas to be more joyful.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's the whole thing. Like if okay, right.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
All right, I have a question, very merry, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Okay, that's coming up next?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Good I Welcome to The Happy Families Podcast. Real parenting solutions,
every single day on Australia's most downloaded Parenting podcast. We
are Justin and Kylie cour and we parents have six kids.
We're so glad you're joining us as we enter the
Christmas season. How I'm feeling very jingly and jangly and
slay and Christmas y.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And I've been dipping into the research Kylie.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Today we're talking about the seven psychological sources of Christmas Magic.
That's what I have tentatively titled today's topic, which means
that we're going to go through a list of seven
things that make Christmas magical from a psychological standpoint.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Seven things I.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Could have kept on going, but I know that you're
only able to tolerate so much. And my goal is
to get through each of them in under a minute.
Unless you decide that you want to tell stories about them.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You're so funny, you're going to blame me when we
go over time.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Let's do the first one, because I'm not going to
get in trouble. It's Christmas. We want to get this
done right. We want people to just know what to do.
The central reason I think that Christmas is full of joy,
full of happiness, full of Christmas magic is relationships. Relationships
are number one. Christmas concentrates our most important relationships.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Whether you're in a.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Midnight gathering with friends, or whether you're reading books and
playing games or swinging in the pool with the kids,
or whether you're flying overseas to catch up with family,
hosting big Christmas parties.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
The Magic Oh's writing Christmas cards to your friends.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Intentional togetherness. Christmas is about intentional togetherness. One of the
few times I think of the year that we genuinely
prioritize connection over productivity, which helps us to feel like
we belong. So that is the number one reason from
my point of view around this, Agree, disagree.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Agreed, Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The second one is I'm going to use some big words,
but then I'll make sure it makes sense. Anticipated joy
in temporal landmarks.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
See that's why I set Christmas up on the first
of November. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Anticipated joy.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It brings joy like it fills me with joy, and
it fills our home with joy. We just had friends
show up the other day and they literally walked in.
The daughter walked in before the mom yep, and she said, oh, mom,
you're going to want to see this, And they both
walked in and just went whoa. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It feels so good, and you're talking about the fact
that the tree was upright.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
That's right, that's all it was. It was just the tree.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, so anticipated joy.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's more than that though, Like you've got this genuine
temporal or timestamped marker. It's this clear boundary in time
that says we can step out of ordinary life. Even
if it's just stepping into the living room and staring
at the tree. It changes your perception of priorities and
time and focus. The anticipation creates dopamine, like, don't mean
(04:06):
everyone's don't means the feel good chemical. No, don't mean
is the anticipation of good times chemical. And so because
we're wired to find pleasure and looking forward to experiences
that are rewarding, sometimes even more rewarding than.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
The experience actually is.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
That's why advent calendars and one more sleep until conversations,
that's all of.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
This Christmas eve boxes.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, seeing the presence under the tree, that's all psychological
scaffolding for optimism and positive emotion. You've got this anticipation
that joy is coming. So if you haven't put the
tree up, it's time to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
If you haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Started doing Christmasy things, start doing them because those traditions
create the joy.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
What's number three?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
The third thing is again some big words, I'm so sorry,
sensory anchoring and memory. That means is, you know, when
you get a certain smell, that's a sensory anchor and
it ties in with that memory of that thing. And
so around Christmas time, I like, let's go Northern Hemisphere
for a second. If you smell the pine needles, you're like, oh,
(05:16):
that must be Christmas for us. It might be smelling cinnamon,
ginger beer, or it might be smelling sunscreen.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I don't even think it's about smelling. It might be tasting.
You have that amazing chocolate moose trifle every year at
Christmas time, and as soon as you take that first bite,
you know it's Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Or.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
If you have it a couple of weeks before Christmas
because you couldn't help yourself, and then you say, oh,
I can't wait for Christmas Day when I get to
do it again.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And so there's this, there's this.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Like you've got all of the different visual cues, like
the Christmas tree and the presence and Christmas lights, like
everyone goes out and looks at the Christmas lights. You've
got all the tactile experiences, like the different things that
you've like Christmas wrap being sorry, I just forgot things
that you touched that a Christmasy or the Sanda hat.
These are these powerful memory anchors and they get you
(06:08):
to do this mental time travel we go. I remember
when I was a kid, or I remember last year
when the kids got excited about this.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So we don't have it up here, but when we
lived in New South Wales, we had a Christmas bush.
Yeah yeah, and I love the flowers of a Christmas
bush and whenever they would start to flower, I would
know Christmas as almost.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It comes Christmas so excited.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, Like, that's exactly what I mean by sense reanchoring.
It was like when I see lavender and not lavender,
what do you call it?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Jack Aranda?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
See the jacaranda in November, I'm like, oh, it must
be UNI exam time.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So you know, I heard a really cool story about
jack randas. Do you know why Sydney has so many
jack Arrandas.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Because somebody planted a whole lot of jacaranda.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
There was a midwife who gifted every new mum a
Jackaranda sapling. Like and so they would go home and
plant their saplings. That's pretty yeah, back in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I'm not sticking to time at all here, So I
want to move this along. The third thing, I just
love this term. There's a guy called a mil dirkhim
sociologist from like one hundred hundred and fifty years ago.
A mil Dirk iime coined this term collective effervescence. And
what it really means is this sweps lemonade sweps.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That is that not that word.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's the energy of the togetherness when everybody is in sync.
And Christmas is one of the very few times, at
least in our society where massive portions not everybody, of course,
but where massive portions of society all synchronize similar music,
similar decorations. Everyone's taking time off work. There's just this
(07:54):
shared rhythm of life, even with strangers, and it creates
belonging at a societ idle scale. Everybody's well, supposedly relaxed
on the roads and in the shop, so what have you.
Everybody's feeling good because it's some time out. So that's
collective effervescence from Durkheim, and I think that's another part
of the psychology of Christmas Magic. All right, we've got
(08:15):
four to go. After the break, we're going to whizz
through those. I promise we'll do them quickly. But again,
if we can practice these things, it makes Christmas more
magical for us.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Hence the podcast today.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Stay with us, we're back. It's the Happy Families Podcast.
Today we're talking about the psychology of Christmas magic.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
You said there was four more? Do we only do three? Well?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, because you started talking me.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, I can't believe you're blaming me. What's the number four?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So permission for wonder, Permission for wonder.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And what I mean by that is like, as adults,
we're always so serious, we're always so efficient, we're always
focused on the here and now, the concrete. The real
Christmas gives an opportunity for abstraction and magical thinking and
play and childlike wonder, which are things that we normally
suppress as adults. They're things that we're not really that
focused on. We get to believe in magic, we get
to talk to the kids about magic. We get to
(09:13):
create elaborative narrative elaborative elaborate narratives that I've argued for
years that we shouldn't around Santa. And now I don't
know why, but I've softened as I've gotten older, and i'm.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It's because your granddad.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Maybe maybe.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
The other day, we had our two year old granddaughter
come over and I had put together a small box
for her, and when I thought about when I would
give it to her, I realized if I waited till
Christmas Day, then all the Christmas outfits and Christmas books
were kind of You're so bad, it's going to be
a one day.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I guess this an awesome Christmas present that you've given
to her at the start of December.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, I couldn't help myself, but was so gorgeous. So
gorgeous is this little two year old She saw this
basket coming towards to her, and her whole face lit
up and she was like, oh me, And then she
asked if she could open it, and we opened it up,
and what I expected was just for her to just
pull everything out. She pulled a book out, and she
(10:15):
literally sat there and read this whole book to herself
and then finished that and looked and send it my
way and said, oh done, And she pulled out the
next book and she was halfway through and I said,
would you like Wally to read it to you? And
she said, no, Indy do it herself. And she read
that book. There was five books. She read each book
one by one.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, it took us about forty minutes to open the box.
So that leads into the next one that I want
to read. And I've gone out of order and I
think we've lost count. So I'm just going to save
the next one. And that is savoring and gratitude. Savoring
and gratitude. There's a guy called Fred Bryant. He did
this really cool research back in about the nineteen nineties
and he found that when we save something, that is
(10:57):
when we amplify and magnify the positive experience of an experience.
When we extend that moment, we find more joy. Savoring
is one of the best ways to be happy. And
as I sat there watching that happen, I just saved it.
I didn't say a word. I sat there for forty
minutes and literally didn't talk. I just sat in the couch,
(11:19):
did the grandpa thing and watch this little granddaughter sit
on your lap and read books and pull things out
of the box one at a time and spend five
or six or seven minutes with each gift before she
went to the next.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
One, and I just thought, oh, my goodness, this is.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And she wasn't being coached, That's what I loved about it.
This was just she was just in autonomously her.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But this is this is the magic of Christmas. This
is where time slows down. This is where we sit
in gratitude, This is where we savor would I would
define it as follows. Christmas is culturally sanctioned slowness, and
we all talk about how life is too fast. But
my goodness, if we can just anticipate and then be
(12:02):
present and then reminisce rather than rush through, we get
to savor it and it feels so good. Savoring is
the practice of grateful attention. And I can't wait for
Christmas Day now so that we can savor that day
as well.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about this idea
of giving ourselves permission to let go of the things
that don't bring us joy and just focus on the
things that do. And too often we kind of fill
our Christmas season up with so much that it's hard
for us to slow down and actually savor the moments
(12:36):
we feel really ragged, time, poor, money, poor, the whole bit.
And I think that just remembering that this is actually
a time for us to slow down and to actually
really savor those things that matter makes such a huge
difference to the way we celebrate.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So I don't know how many we've done, and I've
crossed one off the list anyway, because I've decided that
our time is up and we just need to go
and get ready to save a Christmas and be efficient
and effective so that we can slow down and literally
enjoy that culturally sanctioned slowness of Christmas. I believe that
with these ideas you can have an empirically valid, scientifically backed, joyful.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Magical Christmas. And how good does that sound? Aren't you excited?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I just go you you.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But the thing is, we do it automatically, like this
is the science that underpins why Christmas feels so good.
And if your Christmas sucks, like literally, and I'm not
trying to be rude, I'm not trying to be disrespectful
or any of those things. If your Christmas is not
looking good or feeling good, these ideas will change it right.
Focus on relationships, focus on savoring and gratitude, focus on wonder,
(13:47):
focus on collective effervescence, and focus on the anticipated joy.
Finding ways that you can create sensory anchors and bring
those into your home, whether it's trees or gifts, or
smells or drinks. Like we only have ginger beer on
Christmas Day, right, the kids only have ginger beer on
Christmas Day in their stockings. That's the Christmas thing, right,
(14:09):
That's that sensory anchor. And so if your Christmas isn't
looking great, but you can pull some of these things in.
This is where science shows us that we can make
our lives better.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And that's really why I wanted to share it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Whether you're going to have a great Christmas or you're
kind of dreading it, this can make it better either way.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
For some families that the idea of connection and spending
time with our loved ones can be really challenging. I
just think it's really important that we just focus on
the relationships that are going to bring us joy. Whether
they're blood related or not is irrelevant. It's an opportunity
for us to celebrate building and sustaining loving, strong relationships
(14:51):
in our lives.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I'm just so impressed with my Christmas is culturally sanctioned slowness.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
The Heavy Families podcast is produced by Justin rull On
from Bridge Media.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Imhamitance provides additional research and admin and other support and
for more and fo about making your family happier, especially
out of the Christmas break. Grab one of the Happy
Family's books. You'll get them at happy families dot com
dot au
Just over two weeks to Christmas. Hello, welcome to the
Happy Families Podcast. I'm really excited today's episode. It's a
little bit different today. We're getting excited about psychology.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Kylie.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I can feel your thrill emanating around the podcast studio,
just hearing the words. You know, it's almost Christmas, right, Yes,
this is what I love to do across Christmas. I
love to pick up psychology textbooks literally textbooks, and I
can read so much of them across this nice quiet time.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Can you keep it to yourself?
Speaker 1 (00:37):
I will after this very brief episode of The Happy
Family's podcast where I share with you the psychology of
Christmas magic. Why is it that we and our children
get so excited about Christmas? What are the things psychologically
speaking that are sources of Christmas joy?
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Why does everything have to be scientific?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Because when you understand this stuff, you can actually literally
engineer Christmas to be more joyful.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
That's the whole thing. Like if okay, right.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
All right, I have a question, very merry, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Okay, that's coming up next?
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Good I Welcome to The Happy Families Podcast. Real parenting solutions,
every single day on Australia's most downloaded Parenting podcast. We
are Justin and Kylie cour and we parents have six kids.
We're so glad you're joining us as we enter the
Christmas season. How I'm feeling very jingly and jangly and
slay and Christmas y.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
And I've been dipping into the research Kylie.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Today we're talking about the seven psychological sources of Christmas Magic.
That's what I have tentatively titled today's topic, which means
that we're going to go through a list of seven
things that make Christmas magical from a psychological standpoint.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Seven things I.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Could have kept on going, but I know that you're
only able to tolerate so much. And my goal is
to get through each of them in under a minute.
Unless you decide that you want to tell stories about them.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You're so funny, you're going to blame me when we
go over time.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Let's do the first one, because I'm not going to
get in trouble. It's Christmas. We want to get this
done right. We want people to just know what to do.
The central reason I think that Christmas is full of joy,
full of happiness, full of Christmas magic is relationships. Relationships
are number one. Christmas concentrates our most important relationships.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Whether you're in a.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Midnight gathering with friends, or whether you're reading books and
playing games or swinging in the pool with the kids,
or whether you're flying overseas to catch up with family,
hosting big Christmas parties.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
The Magic Oh's writing Christmas cards to your friends.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Intentional togetherness. Christmas is about intentional togetherness. One of the
few times I think of the year that we genuinely
prioritize connection over productivity, which helps us to feel like
we belong. So that is the number one reason from
my point of view around this, Agree, disagree.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Agreed, Okay.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Number two.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The second one is I'm going to use some big words,
but then I'll make sure it makes sense. Anticipated joy
in temporal landmarks.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
See that's why I set Christmas up on the first
of November. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Anticipated joy.
Speaker 3 (03:15):
It brings joy like it fills me with joy, and
it fills our home with joy. We just had friends
show up the other day and they literally walked in.
The daughter walked in before the mom yep, and she said, oh, mom,
you're going to want to see this, And they both
walked in and just went whoa. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
It feels so good, and you're talking about the fact
that the tree was upright.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
That's right, that's all it was. It was just the tree.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Yeah, so anticipated joy.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
It's more than that though, Like you've got this genuine
temporal or timestamped marker. It's this clear boundary in time
that says we can step out of ordinary life. Even
if it's just stepping into the living room and staring
at the tree. It changes your perception of priorities and
time and focus. The anticipation creates dopamine, like, don't mean
(04:06):
everyone's don't means the feel good chemical. No, don't mean
is the anticipation of good times chemical. And so because
we're wired to find pleasure and looking forward to experiences
that are rewarding, sometimes even more rewarding than.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
The experience actually is.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
That's why advent calendars and one more sleep until conversations,
that's all of.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
This Christmas eve boxes.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, seeing the presence under the tree, that's all psychological
scaffolding for optimism and positive emotion. You've got this anticipation
that joy is coming. So if you haven't put the
tree up, it's time to do it.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
If you haven't.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Started doing Christmasy things, start doing them because those traditions
create the joy.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
What's number three?
Speaker 1 (04:54):
The third thing is again some big words, I'm so sorry,
sensory anchoring and memory. That means is, you know, when
you get a certain smell, that's a sensory anchor and
it ties in with that memory of that thing. And
so around Christmas time, I like, let's go Northern Hemisphere
for a second. If you smell the pine needles, you're like, oh,
(05:16):
that must be Christmas for us. It might be smelling cinnamon,
ginger beer, or it might be smelling sunscreen.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
I don't even think it's about smelling. It might be tasting.
You have that amazing chocolate moose trifle every year at
Christmas time, and as soon as you take that first bite,
you know it's Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Or.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
If you have it a couple of weeks before Christmas
because you couldn't help yourself, and then you say, oh,
I can't wait for Christmas Day when I get to
do it again.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And so there's this, there's this.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Like you've got all of the different visual cues, like
the Christmas tree and the presence and Christmas lights, like
everyone goes out and looks at the Christmas lights. You've
got all the tactile experiences, like the different things that
you've like Christmas wrap being sorry, I just forgot things
that you touched that a Christmasy or the Sanda hat.
These are these powerful memory anchors and they get you
(06:08):
to do this mental time travel we go. I remember
when I was a kid, or I remember last year
when the kids got excited about this.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So we don't have it up here, but when we
lived in New South Wales, we had a Christmas bush.
Yeah yeah, and I love the flowers of a Christmas
bush and whenever they would start to flower, I would
know Christmas as almost.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
It comes Christmas so excited.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, Like, that's exactly what I mean by sense reanchoring.
It was like when I see lavender and not lavender,
what do you call it?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Jack Aranda?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
See the jacaranda in November, I'm like, oh, it must
be UNI exam time.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
So you know, I heard a really cool story about
jack randas. Do you know why Sydney has so many
jack Arrandas.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Because somebody planted a whole lot of jacaranda.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
There was a midwife who gifted every new mum a
Jackaranda sapling. Like and so they would go home and
plant their saplings. That's pretty yeah, back in the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
I'm not sticking to time at all here, So I
want to move this along. The third thing, I just
love this term. There's a guy called a mil dirkhim
sociologist from like one hundred hundred and fifty years ago.
A mil Dirk iime coined this term collective effervescence. And
what it really means is this sweps lemonade sweps.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
That is that not that word.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
It's the energy of the togetherness when everybody is in sync.
And Christmas is one of the very few times, at
least in our society where massive portions not everybody, of course,
but where massive portions of society all synchronize similar music,
similar decorations. Everyone's taking time off work. There's just this
(07:54):
shared rhythm of life, even with strangers, and it creates
belonging at a societ idle scale. Everybody's well, supposedly relaxed
on the roads and in the shop, so what have you.
Everybody's feeling good because it's some time out. So that's
collective effervescence from Durkheim, and I think that's another part
of the psychology of Christmas Magic. All right, we've got
(08:15):
four to go. After the break, we're going to whizz
through those. I promise we'll do them quickly. But again,
if we can practice these things, it makes Christmas more
magical for us.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Hence the podcast today.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
Stay with us, we're back. It's the Happy Families Podcast.
Today we're talking about the psychology of Christmas magic.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
You said there was four more? Do we only do three? Well?
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Yeah, because you started talking me.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Yeah, I can't believe you're blaming me. What's the number four?
Speaker 2 (08:48):
So permission for wonder, Permission for wonder.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
And what I mean by that is like, as adults,
we're always so serious, we're always so efficient, we're always
focused on the here and now, the concrete. The real
Christmas gives an opportunity for abstraction and magical thinking and
play and childlike wonder, which are things that we normally
suppress as adults. They're things that we're not really that
focused on. We get to believe in magic, we get
to talk to the kids about magic. We get to
(09:13):
create elaborative narrative elaborative elaborate narratives that I've argued for
years that we shouldn't around Santa. And now I don't
know why, but I've softened as I've gotten older, and i'm.
Speaker 3 (09:25):
It's because your granddad.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Maybe maybe.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
The other day, we had our two year old granddaughter
come over and I had put together a small box
for her, and when I thought about when I would
give it to her, I realized if I waited till
Christmas Day, then all the Christmas outfits and Christmas books
were kind of You're so bad, it's going to be
a one day.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
I guess this an awesome Christmas present that you've given
to her at the start of December.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah, I couldn't help myself, but was so gorgeous. So
gorgeous is this little two year old She saw this
basket coming towards to her, and her whole face lit
up and she was like, oh me, And then she
asked if she could open it, and we opened it up,
and what I expected was just for her to just
pull everything out. She pulled a book out, and she
(10:15):
literally sat there and read this whole book to herself
and then finished that and looked and send it my
way and said, oh done, And she pulled out the
next book and she was halfway through and I said,
would you like Wally to read it to you? And
she said, no, Indy do it herself. And she read
that book. There was five books. She read each book
one by one.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah, it took us about forty minutes to open the box.
So that leads into the next one that I want
to read. And I've gone out of order and I
think we've lost count. So I'm just going to save
the next one. And that is savoring and gratitude. Savoring
and gratitude. There's a guy called Fred Bryant. He did
this really cool research back in about the nineteen nineties
and he found that when we save something, that is
(10:57):
when we amplify and magnify the positive experience of an experience.
When we extend that moment, we find more joy. Savoring
is one of the best ways to be happy. And
as I sat there watching that happen, I just saved it.
I didn't say a word. I sat there for forty
minutes and literally didn't talk. I just sat in the couch,
(11:19):
did the grandpa thing and watch this little granddaughter sit
on your lap and read books and pull things out
of the box one at a time and spend five
or six or seven minutes with each gift before she
went to the next.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
One, and I just thought, oh, my goodness, this is.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And she wasn't being coached, That's what I loved about it.
This was just she was just in autonomously her.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
But this is this is the magic of Christmas. This
is where time slows down. This is where we sit
in gratitude, This is where we savor would I would
define it as follows. Christmas is culturally sanctioned slowness, and
we all talk about how life is too fast. But
my goodness, if we can just anticipate and then be
(12:02):
present and then reminisce rather than rush through, we get
to savor it and it feels so good. Savoring is
the practice of grateful attention. And I can't wait for
Christmas Day now so that we can savor that day
as well.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
A couple of weeks ago, we talked about this idea
of giving ourselves permission to let go of the things
that don't bring us joy and just focus on the
things that do. And too often we kind of fill
our Christmas season up with so much that it's hard
for us to slow down and actually savor the moments
(12:36):
we feel really ragged, time, poor, money, poor, the whole bit.
And I think that just remembering that this is actually
a time for us to slow down and to actually
really savor those things that matter makes such a huge
difference to the way we celebrate.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So I don't know how many we've done, and I've
crossed one off the list anyway, because I've decided that
our time is up and we just need to go
and get ready to save a Christmas and be efficient
and effective so that we can slow down and literally
enjoy that culturally sanctioned slowness of Christmas. I believe that
with these ideas you can have an empirically valid, scientifically backed, joyful.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Magical Christmas. And how good does that sound? Aren't you excited?
Speaker 3 (13:20):
I just go you you.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
But the thing is, we do it automatically, like this
is the science that underpins why Christmas feels so good.
And if your Christmas sucks, like literally, and I'm not
trying to be rude, I'm not trying to be disrespectful
or any of those things. If your Christmas is not
looking good or feeling good, these ideas will change it right.
Focus on relationships, focus on savoring and gratitude, focus on wonder,
(13:47):
focus on collective effervescence, and focus on the anticipated joy.
Finding ways that you can create sensory anchors and bring
those into your home, whether it's trees or gifts, or
smells or drinks. Like we only have ginger beer on
Christmas Day, right, the kids only have ginger beer on
Christmas Day in their stockings. That's the Christmas thing, right,
(14:09):
That's that sensory anchor. And so if your Christmas isn't
looking great, but you can pull some of these things in.
This is where science shows us that we can make
our lives better.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
And that's really why I wanted to share it.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Whether you're going to have a great Christmas or you're
kind of dreading it, this can make it better either way.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
For some families that the idea of connection and spending
time with our loved ones can be really challenging. I
just think it's really important that we just focus on
the relationships that are going to bring us joy. Whether
they're blood related or not is irrelevant. It's an opportunity
for us to celebrate building and sustaining loving, strong relationships
(14:51):
in our lives.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
I'm just so impressed with my Christmas is culturally sanctioned slowness.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
The Heavy Families podcast is produced by Justin rull On
from Bridge Media.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Imhamitance provides additional research and admin and other support and
for more and fo about making your family happier, especially
out of the Christmas break. Grab one of the Happy
Family's books. You'll get them at happy families dot com
dot au
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