Find time among the festive frenzy this Christmas to stop, look around and be grateful – you might be amazed at the benefits
WORDS CLARE THORP ILLUSTRATIONS SAM KALDA
Between scouring the shops to find that sold-out toy your child has begged Santa for, juggling family commitments and trying to keep to an exercise plan amidst the overindulgence, Christmas can be a stressful time of year. We all want it to be magical — yet the pressure for everything to be perfect can sometimes bring out the worst in us: we gripe over minor inconveniences, complain about our in-laws, and go into meltdown when we run out of wrapping paper.
This year though, Christmas looks a little different: there’ll be no huge office parties; annual get-togethers with friends might be on hold or have to take place over Zoom; and family gatherings are likely to be smaller than usual. After a rollercoaster 2020, and months spent in lockdown with some people unable to see loved ones for long periods of time, we may have developed a fresh appreciation for the things that really matter in life. Will this be the year we laugh at burning the turkey and shrug off the fact we forgot to buy the cranberry sauce – and instead learn to be grateful for all the things we do have?
GIVING THANKS
Being grateful is something most of us have experienced this year. Remember back in the spring, when we went out on our doorsteps on Thursday evenings to clap for the NHS and our key workers? That act of collective gratitude not only showed us how thankful we were – it also helped us cope in an extremely difficult time.
‘Venturing out during lockdown and seeing your neighbours smiling and clapping was a wonderful experience,’ says Dr Fuschia Sirois, a researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Sheffield. ‘Seeing other people expressing gratitude and engaging in it with them has the capacity to make you feel more grateful. Clapping for our carers was a really good example of the social contagion of gratitude and its benefits.’
Yes, that’s right — showing your appreciation doesn’t just make you a good human being, it has a tangible positive impact on your wellbeing, too. It’s for this reason that gratitude has emerged as something of a self-help buzzword in recent years. Search the hashtag #gratitude on Instagram and you’ll find over 25 million posts. For #grateful, there’s 41 million.
But what exactly is gratitude? An emotion, a virtue, a behaviour? ‘It can be viewed as all those things,�
