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News Gram™ November 2006

November 2006 ~ Volume 13, No. 4

With the opening of the holiday season, Americans are all aglow with excitement, warm feelings and glittering expectations of family get togethers and holiday parties. Or are they? It turns out that the holidays and happiness often go their separate ways.

Researchers have been disappointed, though, in determining any substantial correlation between holiday time and suicide. All of which adds up to the impression that we don’t know all that much about the effect of annual fêtes on the incidence of depression. Nevertheless, many psychiatrists believe that the present holiday season doesn’t bring as much happiness with it as we would all like to believe. The reasons make sense, though statistics don’t always support such convictions.

What is it about people that inclines them toward sadness when everyone seems to be holding hands and singing songs? There are a number of candidates for such negative feelings we can identify – and given the time of year, it’s worth a look.

Disappointment – In many cases, holiday parties aren’t all that much fun. They feel more like obligations than the raging free for all blasts that populate many people’s imaginations. At the end of the evening, a lot of people may go home feeling they should never have bucked the traffic just to watch friends get drunk in front of each other. And the food was cold.

Problems come home to roost for the holidays – For some reason, many people perceive their problems more acutely during the holiday season than at other times of the year. The television airs memories, stories, news clips and movies, all of which look backward, sometimes just a few months, sometimes many years. Nostalgia, that viscous mixture of sadness and warmth, conveys the feeling of could have been, thereby reminding us of that lost promotion, a failed love affair or that extra line that appeared on our face last April. Psychoanalysts are fond of noting that we internalize people who we viewed negatively in the past and whose memories are rekindled during holiday time.

Gulp, gulp, gulp – There is little doubt that the holidays encourage a lot more drinking than people do during the rest of the year. Alcohol doesn’t do much for happiness. It has ruined and ended too many lives for any of us to be deluded by the transient, episodic delights it offers. Nor does it do much for anyone’s memory. After six weeks of reveling, too many folks wake up on the other side of the New Year wondering where they’ve been and what they’ve done. Talk about disappointment! Also, alcohol has a depressing influence on our bodies. Under its influence, people slow down, drive fast, sleep sporadically, look bad and smell worse.

So, with all those disappointments, problems and booze, are the holidays worth all the work that goes into decorating the tree, buying presents you can’t afford and putting on pointed paper hats at year’s end? Apparently, most people think it’s worth the effort and then some. The stores fill up so much that in the last six weeks of the year, many businesses do about 25% of their annual sales. The economy fattens itself on the “irrational exuberance” of Americans who look on the season as one big party. It seems that many of us believe there is a lot of fun to be had – provided we do it right.

Don’t expect so much, is one maxim to abide by. The season may seem magical, but it’s a good idea not to let that idea get out of hand. Better to keep things real, drive carefully and hold down the booze consumption. Enjoy friends and family, stay within your budget and be sure to sleep well. Good advice, though it often seems as if no one has ever heard of any of these ideas.

As for the matter of holiday blues, depression and work-related illnesses. Seen from a psychiatrist’s perspective, someone who’s claiming to be depressed because of the way he was treated at work may be blue because of the time of year. The American Psychiatric Association even has a name for it; Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD. Down the line, a little, when you come across a new case involving depression or any of its cousins, consider the possibility that this person may have been feeling that dark shadow hanging over his head each year at this time for all his adult life.

Most of all, it’s a good idea to reach out and help someone else feel a little better or less alone or more appreciated than she thought. People can make a real difference in each other’s lives. If we keep that little guideline in mind, we may find that the season now upon us might turn out to be the happiest, most joyous one we’ve ever had!

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