Stupid Benefits of Celebrating Festivals

The modern-day sceptic looking through his logical lens at what we do at this festive time of the year, often finds it as meaningless, wasteful old fashioned mass hysteria! Attempts by Indians to reconnect with their families and friends, pray and fast together, perform rituals, wear new clothes, hug each other and rejoice and try to keep their traditions and faiths alive make little practical sense. What is worse is that the food is usually poisonously rich, roads are choked, offices and businesses come to a grinding halt in what appears quite stupid.

And yet the air that gets charged with renewed excitement is what scientists find difficult to measure and analyse. While lifestyle and food are indeed important for good health, studies suggest that human emotions may have a significant, perhaps crucial impact on an individual's well-being. Researchers from University of Kansas found that positive emotions are critical for upkeep of physical health for people worldwide, especially for those who are deeply impoverished.

"We've known for a while now that emotions play a critical role in physical health," said Sarah Pressman, assistant professor of psychology at KU and a Gallup senior research associate. "But until recently, most of this research was conducted only in industrialized countries. So we couldn't know whether feelings like happiness or sadness matter to the health of people who have more pressing concerns - like getting enough to eat or finding shelter. But now we do," she added.

They found that positive emotions such as happiness and enjoyment were unmistakably linked to better health, even when taking into account a lack of basic needs. While negative emotions such as worry and sadness were a reliable predictor of worse health.The association between emotion and physical health was more powerful than the connection between health and basic human physical requirements. Even without shelter or food, positive emotions were shown to boost health.

Another study affirmed that family rituals (such as birthdays, religious celebrations, and family reunions) are associated with marital satisfaction, adolescents' sense of personal identity, academic achievement, children's health, and stronger family relationships.

Family rituals and symbolic communication reinforce our identity and tell us who we are as a group, providing continuity in meaning across generations. They deliver valuable emotional imprint the individual may replay it in memory to recapture some of the positive experience.

Be it Eid, Navratri, Durga Puja or Diwali, celebrate it with emotional gusto. Never mind what the Westerners would say about our seemingly meaningless ceremonies. They probably envy us for being able to let our hair down and be “stupid” at times, that their excessively rational mind-sets prevent them from doing. What keeps us ahead of them on the Happiness Index despite our impoverished state is our ability to keep logic aside for a while when we celebrate festivals with passion.