Finding Holiday Happiness (Dr Laurie on the How God Works podcast)

The holidays are supposed to be a time of joy. But all too often, the darker, colder days of winter, and even the stress of preparing for the holidays themselves, can lead people to feel something else: rushed, stressed, lonely, or even hopeless. How can you make sure this year is bright? Dr Laurie joins Dave DeSteno on his show How God Works: The Science Behind Spirituality https://www.howgodworks.org/ to unpack the psychological secrets of celebrations from Christmas, to Hanukkah, to Yule, and more. They’ll also discuss how we can put that wisdom into practice, whatever our beliefs, to make this season a happier and healthier one for all. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  This is Jacob Goldstein. When you're a business owner interested in expanding to new markets, there's a lot to consider and countless questions to answer before making the call. The most important one being, are you ready? That's where ChatGPT comes in. Give it a goal, add your files, and ask chat to help you map out different scenarios for the future of your business. So when growth is on the table, you've got an expansion plan ready to implement. Get started today at chatgpt.com.

• 0:32Laurie Santos?

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• 1:16Laurie Santos?

  It's about helping people live well so they can live on. Learn more at massmutual.com/wellness. That's massmutual.com/wellness.

• 1:32Laurie Santos?

  Pushkin.

• 1:35Laurie Santos?

  This is our final show of 2024, and it's a good opportunity for me to thank you for listening to and supporting the Happiness Lab. Your support means a lot. But you don't have to wait long until we're back. On January 1st, we'll be launching a new series for the new year. I'll be doubling down on the practical happiness advice I know you all appreciate. We're making a series of how-to guides to help you joyfully navigate things like relationships, stress, and the messiness of our daily lives. By the end of each show, you'll have heard at least five tips that you can put into action right away, direct from the mouths of some of the smartest wellbeing scientists and thinkers. All that, starting January 1st. I know you'll love it.

• 2:18Laurie Santos?

  But right now, the holiday season is here.

• 2:23Laurie Santos?

  It's supposed to be a time of joy, but way too many of us are feeling rushed, stressed, lonely, and even hopeless. What are some scientific strategies we can use to have a happier holiday season? And can we also get some happiness insights from the traditions of the past? These are the questions I had a chance to explore with my good friend, Dave DeSteno. Dave's a psychology professor at Northeastern University. He also hosts a podcast called How God Works, an entire show devoted to looking at the wisdom we can get from ancient traditions, no matter what our own beliefs are. Dave and I had a super fun chat on his show about how we can put psychological science and ancient wisdom into practice this holiday season to feel happier and less stressed. So I decided to share that episode with you today. It's my holiday gift to you. I hope you enjoy it.

• 3:23Speaker 03

  You know that turn of phrase, "the dead of winter"? Well, there's a good reason for it. In the northern climes, this is the season of death, dark, and dormancy. All the color and bounty of the fall harvest is gone. Even the sun is disappearing earlier and earlier. And the shorter, colder days we're facing lead to a drop in serotonin levels and changes to our circadian rhythms. The result? Feelings of stress, gloominess, anxiety, and isolation for many people. And as much as we might like to hibernate and sleep away these dark, cold months, for us humans, life goes on.

• 4:07Speaker 03

  Which is one reason why many northern cultures have come up with some of the most festive, cozy, and celebratory winter holidays to help get us through. From lighting candles, to reciting communal prayers and songs, to giving gifts and aid to others. Many of these traditions are rooted in religion. But there's also reason to believe that these traditions can bring comfort and happiness regardless of faith, if you do them right.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  By that, I don't mean reciting the prayer correctly or lighting the candles just so. But rather, by focusing on the heart of the traditions and advice they give. Which is why I'm so thrilled to have my friend, podcast host, and happiness expert Lori Santos join me today to talk about how and why these time-honored holiday traditions work on our brains and bodies. And for those of us who find the traditions themselves a source of worry and stress, we'll find ways to reconnect with the good stuff, to make this holiday season a brighter, happier one for all of us.

• 5:11Speaker 03

  Hi Lori, thanks for coming on the show again.

• 5:12Laurie Santos?

  Thanks for having me back.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  And happy holidays.

• 5:15Laurie Santos?

  Happy holidays, Dave. Did you know, I don't actually, like, I'm not that into the holidays. Did you know that?

• 5:19Speaker 03

  I did. I was going to ask you, because actually, you and I have been friends for a while, but I didn't think I ever asked you, were you doing Christmas as a child or something else?

• 5:27Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I grew up with Christmas, a little bit Thanksgiving, although that wasn't really a big holiday. But my favorite one was Halloween. So I'm really into Halloween, you know, the costumes, the candy, all the spooky stuff. And when November 1st comes around, I have to work really hard to not wind up in a deep depression because, like, my favorite holiday is done. When they take out all the Halloween stuff and they move the candy out and they put the Christmas lights in and the decorations, it's a little period of mourning for me.

• 5:52Speaker 03

  Well, I think you're not that alone. I mean, the surveys show that for a lot of people this time of year, even though many say they're looking forward to the holidays, they're also feeling a good bit of stress, sadness, fatigue, and even loneliness. So given that you are, in some ways, one of those people, what do you think leads to that? What makes this time so hard?

• 6:12Laurie Santos?

  I think part of it is our expectations. I mean, there are literally songs jingling on the radio claiming, "It's the most wonderful time of the year." So if you're thinking, like, this is the kind of time of year when I feel a little bit lonely, or this is a time of year when I feel super overwhelmed because there's just, like, a lot on my plate, you can start to feel like you're doing it wrong, there's something wrong with you. And so I think that this expectation that it's supposed to be the most wonderful can lead us astray. I mean, as you know, from so much work in behavioral science, it's really not the objective way that a situation plays out. It's really our expectation that affects how we think about it. So if our expectations are really high, even a reasonably good, just fine holiday can make us feel kind of crappy.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, like we're not doing it right. But I recently saw a study that piqued my interest. And it was looking at people during the holiday season. And what it showed is that people who celebrated in the more traditional way actually ended up having more positive emotions, higher satisfaction with their lives, and greater well-being. And so that led me to the question of, why? What parts of these traditions boost happiness? And what can we learn from that, whatever our beliefs might be? And that, my friend, is where you come in.

• 7:26Laurie Santos?

  It's not my deep hatred of the holiday season. It's my deep knowledge of behavioral science and happiness. Yeah.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. But sometimes, coming from a place where it wasn't working and learning how to put it into practice, along with that science, is really important. Because as we all know, having the goal is important, but understanding how to actually make it a practice and not just a goal is what really matters.

• 7:47Laurie Santos?

  Yeah. And this is actually something that I've been putting into effect in my own life. Given that I don't like the holidays, what can I do to make them a little bit happier? Find my own rituals and so on.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Let me start with one thing that often, I think, gets in my way in the holidays: all the rushing that we do. You know, it almost feels like a frenzy to prepare. It's like, shop, cook, write cards, and then wrap and shop some more. And even though I know I'm supposed to be enjoying the season, I'm not really doing it as I go along. I keep saying, when this is done, I will have time to be happy. When this is done, I'll be happy. And then it's like the day after Christmas, and I'm like, where did it all go?

• 8:27Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's lots of studies on this just broadly in the field of happiness science, this bias that researchers call the arrival fallacy. It's kind of like, I'll be happy when, right? I'll be happy when I just get through all the shopping and we can, you know, get to the actual day where we open the presents. Or I'll be happy when New Year's rolls around and I'm through all the work parties, right? We're kind of constantly sort of fast-forwarding, like this moment where we can take a breath and stick around and savor and notice all the good stuff. And of course, as you might imagine, that arrival fallacy messes us up for a couple of reasons. One is that we're not enjoying the journey as we go through. So these moments that could be kind of fun when you're shopping and hearing the cool music and seeing people and enjoying the bustle, there's a kind of really richness to that that we could get into.

• 9:11Laurie Santos?

  We're not doing that because we're just like, fast-forwarding until we get that done and go on to the next thing. And so it means that we're missing these moments of joy along the way that we're not paying attention to. But the second reason that falling prey to this arrival fallacy is so bad is that we tend to get these predictions wrong. Christmas morning with my family, sitting under the tree, we think, when I get there, I'll be so happy. But we're forecasting that that's going to feel really awesome. And in fact, it's going to have its problems too, right? Maybe it's kind of cold out, or I didn't get the gift I liked. Very few people have the privilege of having a holiday that goes swimmingly across all those expectations. It's going to actually have its like little bumps. And so inevitably, we wind up kind of fast-forwarding to this time that we're forecasting is going to be super-perfect, but might not be as perfect as we think.

• 9:56Laurie Santos?

  And then we wind up having mist out on the stuff we should have been enjoying along the way.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  But when I was a kid, and I see this in lots of young kids, it's, what's the next present? And I open it, and I look at it, and I'm like, thanks! And I throw it to the side. And then, what's the next present? Do you have any advice for getting really excited kids to savor during the holidays?

• 10:16Laurie Santos?

  Well, in some ways, you're like, asking the wrong person. Because when I was a kid, and even in my family now, you get the presents and everybody just like rips them open, like you're in your own little me, me, me world. And when I first went to the holidays at my in-laws' family, which you go to, my husband Mark in Iowa, they had this tradition that was so incredibly foreign to me, where they waited and went around the room and everybody opened one present at a time. And it was so funny to me how, like, I was like, ready to rip it, and he was kind of looking at me like, Laurie, like, Mom's opening her present, just wait. And I was like, oh. And it winds up being a very long procedure, which kind of was really hard for my my normal temporal discounting, where I wanted to open my presents right away. But they turn it into like a really day long event.

• 11:01Laurie Santos?

  And we kind of open presents and we talk about each present and we go through. But for kids, I think you need to get creative about the rituals of this. Right? And so that can be having something that happens in between every present. Maybe people have to comment on presents. You have to say the one thing you're grateful for in between every present. Or you need to share a delight that you have at the end of the day throughout the holiday season. And sometimes you'll find that even when you're struggling to figure this stuff out, if you give them a new tradition, especially little kids, they sometimes really get into it. And for many parents, I think, seeing the holiday season through the eyes of a kid, if you can help that kid articulate the things that they're savoring, that can be so good for your own positive emotion.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  But that's a really important point that I didn't think of. Because if you do it that way, and if you reflect on it that way, that's the opportunity for the savoring and for the gratitude.

• 11:54Laurie Santos?

  Exactly. And so I think whatever you can do to sort of extend it out can be really powerful.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  It's interesting because when I look at many of the traditional celebrations, they were usually multi-day. In the Christian tradition, there's Advent, you know, four weeks before, when people come together, do crafts together, pray together, eat together. In Hanukkah, there are eight days of families coming together. In Yule, it's 12. And I think they just give you more opportunities to savor. And right now, in the US at least, we've kind of made Christmas one day, and it's the be all and the end all. Right? So if we're trying to think this this season about how to take more time to savor, to not fall prey to the arrival fallacy, what should we do?

• 12:47Laurie Santos?

  So one of my favorite suggestions, which I actually learned from Liz Dunn, she's a professor at the University of British Columbia. She actually suggested harnessing our pro-social emotions to savor more. One of the things she suggests is to give your savoring as a gift to someone. So what does she mean? Let's say it's a holiday event. I'm making gingerbread houses with my niece. And it's messy, I'm feeling a little frustrated. But if I was thinking pro-socially about what I would want to give my niece, I would say, let me try to be fully present and have a really good time. This is going to turn into a fun memory that she's going to look back at later. Right? In some ways, I'm not savoring for me because it's going to help my journey in the holiday season. I'm savoring for my niece. Or, you know, a different holiday version. Sometimes family tensions can come up.

• 13:32Laurie Santos?

  But it's like, you know what? I'm going to engage in this holiday event with no tension. I'm just going to shut all that off so that we can have a good time. And that's the gift to my mom. Even when savoring is hard for us, if we're setting this up as a gift for somebody else, it can help.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  What that suggests in some ways is that presence is a shared experience. And what we're learning more and more from behavioral science is that experiences in some ways matter more than material goods for happiness. Right?

• 13:59Laurie Santos?

  Yeah, that's right. And I think this is something we can really get wrong, especially in the holiday season. We get obsessed with kind of giving a particular thing. But what we know from a lot of the behavioral science and happiness field is that material possessions just don't really increase our happiness as much as we think, or definitely for as long as we think. We'd be much better thinking about gifts of experiences. Whether that's something we literally give somebody, you know, give somebody a gift card for going to a cool new restaurant or a gift card to take a course online. But it can also be the experiences we give people during the holiday season when we're present with them. One of the cool things about the holiday season that we forget is it's one of the few times of year that we kind of all are in the same groove.

• 14:41Laurie Santos?

  People have time off for the major holidays and New Years and so on. It's a time that we can kind of like connect together, even though we're all busy, like we're all sort of going through it together. And so I think it's really a time where we can harness social connection to feel a little bit healthier.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  But I want to get back to the gifts because in some ways that is such a big part of the holiday season. You and I can talk about this and people can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where's my present? For many people, as you said, this can seem like one of the most stressful parts of the holidays. I've got to get this for my kids. I've got to get this for my coworkers. My great aunt Jenny, she hates everything. What am I going to get her? But in reality, I think the reason many of these traditions remind us to give gifts isn't just to make other people happy, but to let us realize that the act of giving itself brings us joy and happiness. So what does the science of happiness tell us about giving to other people? Whether it's spending money on them or giving them our time?

• 15:43Laurie Santos?

  Well, the evidence here is super clear, which is that doing for others is one of the fastest ways to make ourselves happy. And I think this is something our culture gets wrong a lot. It shifts a little bit in the holiday season where it's the sort of season of giving. But even in the season of giving, and definitely for the rest of the year, it feels like we're not in the season of giving. We're in the season of self-care or treating ourselves, right?

• 16:13Laurie Santos?

  And even in the holiday season, you can look at these self-help books, which is like how to get self-care during the season of giving. Right? It's all about us. So controlled for the amount of income people have, people who donate more money to charity are happier than those that tend to not donate as much money to charity. Controlled for the amount of free time people have, people who volunteer their time to support others wind up being happier than those that keep their time to themselves. And in studies where you force people to do nice stuff for others, you wind up finding that even forcing somebody to do nice things for others makes them feel happier.

• 16:45Laurie Santos?

  One of my favorite of these studies is based on some of the work of Liz Dunn. She and Lara Acknen, they just walk up to people on the street and hand them 20 bucks. Here, I want you to spend this 20 bucks to do something nice to treat yourself. That's one condition. Or here, I want you to spend these 20 bucks to do something nice for somebody else. You could donate this money to charity. You could buy something nice for a friend. And what Liz finds is at the end of the day, and even later on, when she surveys people, people who spend the money on others are happier. Now, this is an effect that really violates our intuitions. I think generally, anything we can do that has a positive effect on other people winds up increasing both their happiness and our happiness more than we expect. Nick Epley, who's a professor at the University of Chicago, has this great term for this. He calls it "undersociality," or alternatively,

• 17:29Laurie Santos?

  he sometimes calls it "the prosociality paradox." We kind of know that doing nice stuff for others is going to be good, but we completely underestimate how good it's going to feel, both for the other person. Nick has all this evidence showing that if you predict, say, how good a compliment will feel to a stranger on the street, or giving a little gift of coffee if you're at the coffee shop, buying the coffee for the person behind you. We predict it's going to be good, but we consistently super underestimate how good, both for the other person, but also for us. And those biases are really problematic, because if you think about when do we make these decisions to do nice things for other people, it's usually because we have a prediction about them. My brain has this little mental calculator that's assessing, well, should I buy the latte for myself? Or should I gift the latte to the person behind me?

• 18:14Laurie Santos?

  And if you're predicting, well, for myself, it's going to feel great, you're usually going to act on the basis of that false prediction. And that's why I think these religious traditions can be so helpful, because they force us to develop habits of doing that. You just kind of build in charity etched into the belief system that you're working with. Or they allow us to form habits where we get some experience with this. So we get practiced with it over time. And maybe we can learn, like, well, even though my intuition says this, last time I donated the money to charity when I had a little extra and I was feeling bad, it felt kind of nice, so maybe I should do that again. And so I think it's helpful to have these structures to help us.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  One thing that I learned is that the fifth night of Hanukkah is focused on giving to others outside of the family. And actually, children are encouraged to give gifts too. So it's not only that they're receiving, but whether they're given money or they buy toys, they're encouraged to basically give it to other people, other children. And by that act, they're basically in this done study in some ways.

• 19:15Laurie Santos?

  Exactly.

• 19:16Speaker 03

  And learning that. And again, here's where I think we see some of the wisdom of these spiritual traditions and these holidays that are all about giving. I think part of it is sometimes you have to actually have the experience to realize that all the data we're talking about actually is true and means something to you.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  But it's not just money, right? It's giving of yourself time, care, reaching out, whatever it might be. Is it true that engaging in service to others outside of the giving of money has the same effect?

• 19:52Laurie Santos?

  For sure. And I think when you see the phrase "service to others," it almost feels like, "Well, I gotta pack my bags and go to the soup kitchen for like 10 hours." No, a service to others can look like texting a friend you haven't talked to in a while and just saying, "Hey, thinking of you." It can be giving a compliment to someone on the street. It can be expressing gratitude to someone in your workplace who did something really great. It can even be, and I think this is super important to remember in the holiday season, it can even be asking for help. Because the act of asking for help often lets somebody do something nice for you. One of my favorite examples of this is think back to the last time you were walking around and someone asked you for directions, especially directions to somewhere you knew. How did you feel about that? You're like, "Yes, I get to do this nice thing. I get to show my knowledge, like I'm helping this person."

• 20:37Laurie Santos?

  Like, you got asked for something, but you felt great. And that's typically true when people ask us for stuff, especially stuff that's pretty easy for us to do. It winds up making us feel really good. And so during the holiday season, when you're feeling overwhelmed, think about the possibility of like asking a family member for help. It's such a simple action, but it makes other people feel competent and gives them the benefit of helping you. And then everybody kind of winds up feeling happier. It kind of boosts the overall pie of good cheer in the holiday season in ways we don't anticipate.

• 21:22Laurie Santos?

  There's nothing quite like having pieces in your closet you love and know you can count on for any occasion, except maybe giving someone else that same feeling. And I have to tell you, when it comes to my go-to gift this season, I think this might be the year of the hoodie, specifically Quince's Mongolian Cashmere Full Zip Hoodie, which I bought for myself and absolutely love. You know when you get something that's so comfortable, so soft, and so easy to throw on? That you suddenly want to wear every day? That's where I am with this hoodie. And I started to think that instead of agonizing over what to get everyone on my holiday list, I might just buy them all one of these. I mean, who on my list wouldn't love a gift of perfect coziness? But it's not just hoodies. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere and organic cotton.

• 22:07Laurie Santos?

  And if a cashmere hoodie isn't quite right for someone on your list, Quince has so much more. From leather bags and jewelry to cozy scarves, down outerwear, and even hotel-quality bedding. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was the Happiness Lab. It's the best way to support the show. A business gift is never just a gift. It's a thank you, a milestone, a moment of appreciation. It's a message about how much someone matters and what your brand stands for.

• 22:50Laurie Santos?

  At 4imprint, you'll find thousands of customizable options, like premium apparel, branded drinkware, tech totes, and more, each chosen not just for function, but for meaning. You can tailor every detail: your logo, your message, your presentation, so your gift feels personal and on-brand. And with expert support, dependable service, and thousands without a setup fee, creating something thoughtful doesn't mean making it complicated. Every order is backed by 4imprint's 360-degree guarantee, so you can be 4imprint certain it'll arrive exactly as expected, on time, and with the care your brand deserves. Because when the moment matters, the right gift speaks volumes and the right partner makes it easy.

• 23:36Laurie Santos?

  Explore gifting with purpose and certainty at 4imprint.com. 4imprint, for certain. Flu season is here, and with everything we have going on, it's easy to put getting a flu shot on the back burner. But taking a few minutes now can help protect you and your family. That's why I'm headed to CVS Pharmacy to get my flu shot. And honestly, I was really impressed by how easy it was to schedule. With CVS, you can schedule appointments for up to four family members at once, so you can take care of everyone in one go. Just visit CVS.com/flu or use the CVS Health app to find an appointment that works for you. So make protecting yourself this flu season one less thing to worry about. Did you know that flu shots are free with most insurance plans?

• 24:20Laurie Santos?

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• 24:59Speaker 03

  As Laurie said, every act of giving doesn't have to be a major project. In fact, when time is short, like it often is at the holidays, finding simpler ways to help others might be what makes those good deeds not just more possible, but also more enjoyable.

• 25:16Speaker 03

  And that idea of scaling down, of not being the person who's got everything together and does everything perfectly, can apply in other ways, too.

• 25:26Laurie Santos?

  We recently just talked to the writer Oliver Berkman for my podcast, who has a really great new book on the idea of imperfectionism, where what would it look like to kind of do things a little bit less good in ways that allow you to not feel so overwhelmed? So you can be present and happy during the season. And he had this notion that I loved of scruffy hospitality. Where the idea is like, if you go to the holiday party and the cookies aren't really done yet and like, everything's kind of a little bit of a mess and the host is like, hey, can you kind of help frost those little sugar cookies? Can I need some help? You feel like you're seeing a vulnerable side of the people you're interacting with, and you're comfortable. But you know, sometimes you go to that holiday dinner party and it's like, perfect. It's got the candles and everything set up. And how do you interact if you're a guest there?

• 26:10Laurie Santos?

  You kind of feel a little maybe on edge, like, should I take my shoes off? Like, did I put my napkin in the right spot? If you go with the scruffy version, you personally don't feel as overwhelmed when you're running your own dinner parties and so on.

• 26:22Speaker 03

  You are absolutely... I've had this experience with people I know, and I've gone to these parties. And not only have I felt like, okay, which fork do I use? But I also feel like, oh, my God, I can never have them to my house. I can't reciprocate because I'll never be able to pull this off.

• 26:35Laurie Santos?

  And you know, and one of the things we know from the work, from the research, is that, you know, social connection is such a huge part of our happiness. I think some of us shy away from social connection, especially during the holiday season where we feel like, you know, maybe I don't have enough money for presents, or I don't have, you know, the time or the bandwidth to decorate my house. We can get kind of messed up about how much we have to do. And so I think resetting those perfectionist expectations, giving yourself permission to do it 85%, 89%, just that permission can be really powerful.

• 27:05Speaker 03

  This brings up the second point I wanted to talk about, about gift giving and or getting. It's sometimes I get a gift and I'm like, oh, God, now I gotta get this person something. And I'm not proud of that response, but it feels like an indebtedness, right? I'm not feeling gratitude for it. I'm feeling like it's another responsibility. And so the question that I have is, how do we cultivate more of a sense of gratitude and not like, oh, great, now I owe you something at the holiday season?

• 27:37Laurie Santos?

  It's interesting, gratitude, it's a complicated positive emotion, right? Because it makes me feel good that someone thought about me, but it does have this kind of sense of indebtedness. Like, I kind of want to give back. And that kind of motivation, this is kind of the getting to the pro-social emotions that you've talked about and the kind of ways that gratitude motivates us to be good people. It can be the little juice we need to do that nice, good act to somebody else, which winds up making us feel better, right? And so one of my favorite strategies for this is to commit to being a good gift receiver.

• 28:10Laurie Santos?

  Sometimes we think that the way to be a good gift receiver is to like, give materially the same kind of financial transaction back, right? You know, if you got the socks, it's like, well, I have to get something equivalent for the socks to, you know, Jolene, who I didn't think was going to get me anything. A different way we can be a good gift receiver is to really verbally and clearly express our gratitude about the gift. And I think best expressions of gratitude are ones that are specific. So, oh, my gosh, I really like these socks. They're a particular color that goes with my suit. I can see myself wearing them. So you're kind of simulating the specifics of why that thing is really helpful for you. But even better way to be a good gift receiver is to thank people, not just at the moment where you rip the present open, but when you're actually using them later. So I've committed to trying to do this with gifts that I've got.

• 28:54Laurie Santos?

  Like, I have this wonderful Dutch oven that my dad and my stepmom gave me, at this point, many years ago, but Dutch ovens, you know, live on. And there's moments when I like, you know, I'm just making some casserole or something, and I think, this is so cool that they gave me this gift. And I'll just like a quick text of like, I'm still using your Dutch oven, still around, I'm still enjoying it. Another great thing gratitude can do is it can get rid of what's called hedonic adaptation, which is like, you just kind of get used to stuff that's good stuff in your life, but you kind of stop noticing that it was really awesome. Take my Dutch oven, for example, right? When I'm thinking about, man, I'm so grateful that, you know, my dad got me this thing. It makes the Dutch oven kind of feel a little bit more exciting when it could have just been this pot, you know? And again, it's just a boost for all of us and a boost to the relatedness.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  To the relationship.

• 29:38Laurie Santos?

  Right? Because that's what the gifts are really about. It's not like, well, financial transaction, and now I'm indebted. No, the goal is to create more of a connection and ideally one that lives, you know, past December 26, too.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  And I think one thing that we learn from the spiritual traditions is when they talk about gratitude, it's not so much focused on the object, it's focused on the effort and the cost to the person to do it. Maybe they knitted me a hat, maybe it's a hideous hat, but they put their heart and soul into that thing, right? And in some ways, that means more to me than a beautiful hat that somebody got me at Macy's on their way out of the store as an extra, you know, gift topper. And so I totally agree that we need to thank them for it and keep those relationships going.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  I think, you know, part of what we need to do more is to appreciate the intention behind the gift.

• 30:32Laurie Santos?

  And I think it can help if you try to think about that intention in terms of their relatedness, right? You know, the hat that was knit, or maybe you don't love the hat, you're not going to use the hat. Like, you can think back to like, Derek moments where, you know, that cousin was sitting there, you know, knitting this wonderful thing for you, thinking about you, enjoying it.

• 30:49Speaker 03

  I often talk about gratitude related to how it makes us more virtuous people, more generous people. But what does it do just for our health and happiness?

• 30:57Laurie Santos?

  Oh, my gosh, it has so many positive effects that are like, kind of striking when you read the literature. So individuals who are generally just, you know, personality-wise, a little bit more grateful, wind up sleeping better. There's evidence from folks like Bob Emmons' lab that it can reduce things like inflammation. How does gratitude reduce something like inflammation? When you're more grateful, you're more future-oriented, you eat a little bit healthier, you go to the gym a little bit more. That by itself is going to reduce inflammation. So has this cascade of tiny positive effects, both physically and, I think, mentally, that allow us to engage in the right behaviors and motivations that wind up making us healthier and happier over time?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  So if we're celebrating traditionally, we're doing gratitude prayers during Advent and Christmas, during the eight days of Hanukkah. If we're kind of celebrating in a secular way, what are the ways that you encourage people to cultivate gratitude?

• 31:49Laurie Santos?

  There's lots of secular gratitude practices that work pretty well. The simple act of writing in a gratitude journal every day, you know, three to five things you're grateful for, that can wind up making you feel happier. If that feels a little bit onerous, one of my favorite alternative versions of that practice is something I've done with Catherine Price, who's a journalist. She actually talks about developing a delight practice, where if you just see something delightful in the world, you just text each other, "I saw this ridiculous thing." Delight, you know? The normal bias we have is a negativity bias, right? Where we're out seeking the tough stuff. And I think in a holiday season where our expectations are high, that negativity bias can be on, like, you know, high alert. But a gratitude practice or a delight practice trains your attention to find the delightful

• 32:32Laurie Santos?

  things. And like religions, it's ideal if you do it with Somebody else. One of the reasons religious traditions work so well is most religious traditions aren't, you know, you and your house, all by yourself, engaging in something. It's doing something with other people. If you're doing a delight practice with other people, you gotta find the delights. Because, you know, they're gonna text you three times with delights and you're gonna feel like, oh, man, I gotta, gotta find something. But then your attention is out there, looking for the good things in the world, looking for the nice stuff.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  When I think back about the holidays that, that I did throughout my life, some of the ones that seemed most rich and brought me the most joy involved doing the, the traditional things for Christmas. And one of those was going to mass, Christmas services.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  I was raised Catholic. I was an altar boy. I have none of those things now. I'm a good old agnostic scientist. But I still like going to those services with the, with the majesty and the music.

• 33:41Speaker 03

  And this got me thinking about your friend in mind, Dacher Keltner's work on, on awe. And it seems like during these holidays, there are these times when you can experience awe, the, the art, the music, the beauty, even lighting your first Christmas tree at home with your family. And so what do we know about how those experiences of awe affect happiness?

• 34:05Laurie Santos?

  Research shows that experiencing awe winds up having these very important positive consequences. One of them is that it winds up making us feel more socially connected. This is some of my favorite of Dacher Keltner, who you mentioned, work, where he does these studies where he puts people in a really awe inspiring situation. He doesn't use the Christmas trees or the holidays. He brings people to these kind of places like Yellowstone and where you can kind of experience this sort of awe and nature. And he says, hey, you know, look at this little map of you and your community and show me how much overlap there is. Is there kind of a lot of overlap or less overlap? And what he finds is that people self-report experiencing a lot of overlap with their community, right? Which is kind of striking because they're not, again, they're not In front of a Christmas tree with their family, they're looking out at this vast

• 34:48Laurie Santos?

  landscape with nobody in it, yet they're feeling really socially connected. And I think that's what awe does in the holiday season, too, right? One that Dacre talks about a lot is the sort of awe that we get from moral actions. And I think the holiday season is one of the only times of the noon cycle where we can see people doing really wonderful, good things in the world. It's also a moment where we get awe from collective effervescence. You know, why does the music at a church resonate with you if you don't believe any of that stuff? Because we're all kind of singing it together. When you're in the middle of a hallelujah chorus, you know, you could be the biggest atheist in the world, but something's pumping through your brain that's making you feel really socially connected.

• 35:35Speaker 03

  The holidays are supposed to be a time for rest and renewal, too, right? If we're going to be happy, we need that downtime, that time to disconnect. And so whether it's prayer or simple contemplation, these holidays build those moments in. And it's interesting because it's often around the idea of candles and candle flames, right? Which is an ancient technique for focusing the mind. So Christians focus on candles that they light in the advent wreath. Many Jewish folks often focus on the candles in the menorah. There's even some Jewish traditions that emphasize focusing on the candles of the menorah as a way to meditate. And even in the old celebration of pagan yule around the solstice, there

• 36:19Speaker 03

  was this idea of the yule log. And I don't know if you had this, because I grew up in New York. In New York, there's something called the Yule Log TV show.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Channel 11 in New York on Christmas Eve would all night show a picture of a log and a fireplace burning.

• 36:40Laurie Santos?

  I love this.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  And for those of us who didn't have fireplaces at our home, we would sit there and we would look at it. And it was soothing and it would lead to contemplation.

• 36:59Laurie Santos?

  I'm laughing at you, but actually, when I first moved into the house that my husband and I live in in New Haven, we bought the house because it had this nice fireplace. But it turns out, we didn't look into the fireplace, and it turns out, it's bricked off at the top.

• 37:09Speaker 03

  No.

• 37:09Laurie Santos?

  It's just like a fake fireplace. And so, I actually bought like a little DVD of flaming fireplace.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  The Yule.

• 37:15Laurie Santos?

  The Yule. I didn't know this was like an old school thing.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 37:17Laurie Santos?

  I thought it was DVD technology. But, no, but the reason we like looking at it is that you get back from that, you know, traffic-y moment of shopping and so on, and you look at the flame, and your breath kind of entrains to it. And working on the breath is a really powerful way to hack the relaxation system that we experience. You know, a lot of the holiday season activates what's called our fight or flight, our sympathetic nervous system, which is, we're kind of on high alert, we're incredibly vigilant, our heart's beating faster. What we really want to do is to activate the kind of sister system to our fight or flight, which is what's called the rest or digest, or the parasympathetic nervous system. And when you look at a flame, and you're just kind of watching it over time, your breath kind of entrains to the slow movement of the flame.

• 38:00Laurie Santos?

  So I think the fire is a really great way to do that, and maybe one of the best ways to do it, you know, in the holiday season. Plus, it's light. You know, in your intro, you talked about this is time that's dark, and our serotonin's going down, and so, something that gives us light in a way that also entrains our breath and gets us kind of a little bit meditative, it's a super great practice, especially for secular folks.

• 38:23Speaker 03

  And you know, speaking of secular folks, it's true that a lot of people celebrate holidays like Christmas, even if they aren't very religious. It's more about Santa than the birth of Jesus, right? But there's probably still ways they can practice elements of the holidays to find that joy, connection, and all the other good things we're talking about. But that makes me wonder, is there a way that we can create our own rituals and traditions, ones that don't have anything to do with the existing holidays, but still allow us to celebrate them in a way that feels meaningful?

• 38:58Laurie Santos?

  This is the time when you can kind of create these traditions and you'll be surprised at how many of them kind of stick. My mom has one. I mean, she was very close to her godmother, who has now passed a long time ago. And her godmother really enjoyed lobster. It was her favorite thing. And so my mom, kind of in honor of my godmother for the holidays, will purchase a live lobster. My mom doesn't eat shellfish, though, so she doesn't like to eat the lobster. What she does is she takes this live lobster to the beach and she sort of releases the lobster into the beach. And the idea is it's just, you know, it's a way of kind of thinking about her godmother and sort of giving back. It's very funny. If you watch the ritual, it's really fun for the lobsters because the lobsters kind of get the little lobster cloth that he's taken off and they're on the beach and they're

• 39:41Laurie Santos?

  like a little confused, but they're like, great, and they just dive into the ocean.

• 39:47Laurie Santos?

  One of the things I think we forget about rituals is that like, in my mom's case, she's buying this lobster, but like, they don't have to cost any money. They don't have to make sense, right? They can be kind of dumb, like even sometimes absurd. And at least for, you know, a more atheist, secular person like me, the kind of absurdity is sort of fun in rituals. But these are the things we can embrace. And I think especially if you feel frustrated by holiday traditions, you know, maybe you're grieving the old holiday tradition, you're looking for something, this is a spot where building new stuff can feel really good. This is something we've done in my own family. I have, you know, a family where, you know, there's divorce and there's lots of families vying for our attention in the Christmas season. You know, there's somebody who's going to get you on Christmas morning, but it's really

• 40:32Laurie Santos?

  hard to be in all the places on Christmas morning. And so our family has developed a new tradition of celebrating around the solstice, which is not as busy a time, you know, flights are a little bit cheaper so everybody can get together. And it's like, we just developed all these dumb rituals at the solstice. We go solstice cake, watch some Carl Sagan and these kinds of things. And so it's like, you just make stuff up, but really, it winds up feeling a lot better.

• 40:56Speaker 03

  No, but it's bringing you together, you're having those experiences of gratitude and sharing, that's amazing.

• 41:01Laurie Santos?

  Like, turn these things into rituals as though they were sort of blessed by some religious authority and you have to do them every year. And those kinds of rituals will wind up making you feel a lot better.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  The doing is the point.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Listeners, right now, as Lori and I are going to be leaving, it is cold and dark in Boston. And I will say that I can attest to this because my holiday season is already feeling better because I have social connection with my good friend Lori, who I haven't seen in a while. I'm incredibly grateful that she's so busy that she made time to come on this. And so, thank you.

• 41:40Laurie Santos?

  Thanks, Dave.

• 41:41Speaker 03

  And happy holidays.

• 41:42Laurie Santos?

  Happy holidays.

• 41:47Speaker 03

  That's it for season seven of How God Works. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us some comments or stars wherever you listen. We'll be back in the spring with new episodes that explore more of life's big questions and what advice science and spirituality has to offer. In the meantime, we'll be sharing some special surprises, as well as some of our favorite episodes from the archives. For now, all of us here are wishing you and yours a truly happy holiday season and all the best for the coming year.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  How God Works is hosted by me, Dave DeSteno. This episode was written by Josie Holtzman and me. Our senior producer is Josie Holtzman. Our producer is Sophie Eisenberg. Our associate producer is Emmanuel Dzarmay. Executive producer is Genevieve Sponsler. Merritt Jacob is our mix engineer and composed our theme, which was arranged by Chloe Disteno. The executive producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzalez. This podcast was also made possible with support from the John Templeton Foundation. To learn more about the show and access episode transcripts, you can find our website at howgodworks.org. And for news and peeks at what's coming, feel free to follow us on Instagram at How

• 43:09Speaker 03

  God Works Pod, or me on X or Blue Sky at David Disteno.

• 43:21Laurie Santos?

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