Not feeling the holiday spirit? You’re not alone. The holidays can be filled with stress compounded by the expectation to remain in a good and cheerful mood. And yet the grim reality is that the winter season heralds higher death rates.
Some of these increased deaths are from cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—and others are from traffic deaths, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Other studies have uncovered a “Christmas effect” that increases death rates by 5 percent and up to 22 percent over the winter season (Moholdt et al., 2021).
Here are some things to consider that could help ease you through the season.
Cognitive Dissonance
It is a psychological axiom that the more we try to repress sadness, grief, and fear, the more they tend to wallop us into a state of anxiety, grumpiness, and dis-ease. Part of the issue is something called cognitive dissonance, in which we become stuck and confused by having two conflicting feelings that tend to cancel each other out. We often tend to submerge the intolerable feelings.
The holidays provide a perfect example of cognitive dissonance: There is an expectation to be happy, grateful, and giving. The sad feelings we feel are not socially or personally acceptable, so we may experience a state of cognitive dissonance.
A solution is to give yourself time and space to heal. Let the uncomfortable feelings rise to the surface. Write them down. Talk to a trusted person. You can even talk out loud to a deceased loved one—or even the creator of the universe—about your hurts, fears, and complaints. (Therapists call this the “empty chair” technique, so you have a perfectly valid explanation if someone catches you talking by yourself.)
Confronting Our Mortality
Sometimes you just have to go through a messy transformative process before getting to the other side of joy. I believe confronting death is part of it. Sometimes we do it metaphorically and sometimes literally. Remember Ebenezer Scrooge in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Scrooge was the ultimate bully. He was famously mean, excessively cheap, and he exploited others for his own personal gain. He fostered a hostile workplace for his loyal and impoverished employee who had a family in need and a son (Tiny Tim) who suffered with an illness that could have been aided with medical attention which they could not afford.
Scrooge turned a blind eye to Tiny Tim’s suffering, and others’, until three ghosts visited him. The ghosts of Christmas past, Christmas present, and the future. It was the future ghost, who showed Scrooge his imminent death via a visit to his headstone, who ultimately shook Scrooge. When he woke the next morning—alive—on Christmas Day, he was transformed. Filled with sudden gratitude for life, he enthusiastically became generous with money, his heart, and his time. He also helped to save Tiny Tim.
Death as a Sacred Healing Experience
In my research on sacred healing (which included peoples’ near-death experiences, spontaneous remissions from cancer, and other healing miracles), I found that death was the ultimate sacred healing experience. We do not discuss death very much in this culture. Instead, we spend billions of dollars on anti-aging products and longevity biohacks. We fight to live and are intolerant of aging and death. Consequently, we may miss some of the sacred moments of life that could fill us with awe while we are alive.
As a participant in my research study said: “When you’re dealing with profound illnesses, you do have to worry about dying…but if you’re unafraid, you go out with a peaceful heart…whatever belief systems help you not to have fear is where you need to be….(and) it’s important to tell people you love them so there’s no regret.”
I will add that many of the people in my study reported feeling more alive after being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and said they experienced a closeness with God or something bigger. They felt transformed and had a sense of purpose, driven by the feeling that there was something for them to do while they were still alive, like helping others. Many repeatedly shared they engaged in extra “spiritual study” and also explained they were more comforted by death because they experienced and/or felt that life did not end when the body dies.
Wherever you are in your journey this season, I hope you will feel reassured that all of it is OK: the messiness, the fear, the joy, the heartbreak, the love, the pain, and the healing. Your life is a journey that only you can experience.