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Why do we love (re)watching Christmas movies so much?

2022-12-26 13:21:07Lifestyle SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
Why do we love (re)watching Christmas movies so much?
Trading Places

From "Home Alone" to "The Grinch", from "Miracle on 34th Street" to "Trading Places"; these are just a few of the most popular Christmas movies. Titles that have now become authentic classics, re-proposed year after year by television with unchanged public success. Viewers never seem to tire of it. Is that the case? Not at all: it is a completely justifiable behavior from a scientific point of view.

Soothing escape from reality

As illustrated recently in Psychology Today by Pamela B. Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center at Fielding Graduate University in Santa Barbara (California), the "predictable" nature of such films is able to help in "reducing stress, family pressure and sadness due to shorter days and less sunlight in the Northern Hemisphere".

On the other hand, as pointed out in 2020 by University of Southampton professors Tim Wildschut and Constantine Sedikides, by offering such a soothing opportunity to escape from the daily routine, Christmas movies can “improve mood and alleviate symptoms of depression ". Along the same lines, Courtney Cope, therapist of the online platform BetterHelp, who in an interview with "Fortune" last month defined this type of work as "a beautiful break from reality during which we can imagine a world in which good always wins, families settle their differences, and the protagonist finds true love. That being the case, it is not surprising that the aforementioned Rutledge asserted that “an evening spent watching a feel-good movie can be an easy form,

The nostalgia factor

In addition to the one related to the plot, another element contributes decisively to the eternal success of the trend: the fact that it uses the so-called "rosy hindsight", or the cognitive bias on the basis of which people tend to judge the past in a much more favorable way positive than currently. That's what Cope was referring to when he added in Fortune that "holiday movies make us happy for the same reason that watching any of our favorite movies makes us happy: the ritual, the routine, and the familiarity."

All aspects that "have a relaxing effect on our nervous system". Finally - she concluded - "we usually watch the same Christmas movies every year and this gives a sense of order and calm in an often unpredictable world". A concept - this - also expressed by Robert Thompson, professor at Syracuse University (New York): "It doesn't matter how the economy is doing, whether there is stability or chaos - he said in 2019 for the New York Times - there is always a incredible commodity for something simple, bland, unsophisticated and easy to look at. Even better if it's packaged as something for Christmas."

"ambivalent period"

Also, in the opinion of psychologist and psychotherapist Sergio Stagnitta, founder of cinemaepsicologia.it, the soothing nature of Christmas films and their traditional annual viewing are a balm for the soul: "What we will experience is family time and tranquility," he notes. he. – It is therefore clear how the most appropriate moment to enjoy a story that offers us this sense of calm: partly because we already know how it will end, partly because the mere fact of the repetition of the vision has an inner calming function , exactly as it happens with fairy tales for children".

At the same time, however, for the expert, Christmas "is also a somewhat disturbing period, therefore ambivalent from a psychological point of view". Reason? The same "family pressure" mentioned by Rutledge: "In the last days of the year - she illustrates in fact - parental dynamics that have remained dormant are reactivated and a (often heavy) balance is drawn up of the twelve months that have just passed".

Hence the success of a nostalgic, melancholic film like "A Christmas Carol", which deals with the memory of a lost time, but also, for example, the recent "Don't look up", which even talks about the danger that the Earth will be destroyed forever. Whatever one's state of mind, the Christmas-cinema couple seems destined to remain inseparable. / Corriere della Sera


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