The antipathy between psychology and Christmas

As a psychologist, I‘m afraid that that there may be more than a little antipathy between my discipline and the Christmas season in general and Santa Claus in particular.  

Gary Kustis, an Ohio-based organizational psychologist, says that many people’s introduction to psychology as a profession is the movie, "A Miracle on 34th Street." In this 1947 Christmas classic, the film’s antagonist Granville Sawyer is a psychologist at Macy’s Department Store,  who is asked to evaluate their new Santa, Kris Kringle. The dour and deceitful Sawyer takes an immediate dislike to the relentlessly jolly Kris, concluding that he is delusional, with “maniacal tendencies,” especially when his delusion is challenged. 

The creepy Sawyer, was also providing some freelance semi-amateur psychotherapy to Macy’s young stock boy, Alfred. Sawyer had convinced Alfred that his desire to impersonate Santa and distribute toys at the YMCA stemmed from an unresolved guilt complex and an Oedipal hatred for his father. Evidently Sawyer was an unrepentant Freudian.

Overthinkingit.com blogger Ariel Herrlich maintains that while it is probably alright for Kris to impersonate Santa, because he really is Santa Claus, Albert’s preoccupation is actually “kind of creepy” and inappropriate. Never-the-less, in the film, Kris takes great exception to Sawyer’s meddling with Alfred’s psyche and confronts him, questioning his qualifications and competence and threatens to expose him to Mr. Macy. The sneering Sawyer so infuriates Kris that he ends up bonking him upside the head with his cane. Kustis says, “It doesn’t bode well for your profession when even Santa wants to open a can of whoop-ass on you.” 

Sawyer retaliates by getting Kris committed to Bellevue’s Psychiatric ward. Mr. Macy is called as a witness in the sanity hearing, where he says to Sawyer, in a contemptuous voice dripping with sarcasm, “Psy-cho-lo-gist! Where'd you graduate from, a correspondence school? You're fired.”

My wife Diane, who is also in the field, and I both occasionally enjoy pronouncing the word “psychologist” in the same venomous manner as Mr. Macy. For example, if I come up with some half-ass theory to account for something that she considers preposterous, she’s likely to say to say to me, “Psy-cho-lo-gist! Where'd you graduate from, a correspondence school?"

Psychological assessments of St. Nick

Unfortunately the Santa-Psychology conflict is not confined to just this movie. Around this time of the year, it is not unusual for psychological assessments of St. Nick to appear in the popular media as well as professional journals. A newspaper article entitled: “A Psychological Profile of Santa Claus,” written by Akron school psychologist E. Bard, illustrates this genre.

Bard theorized that Santa might be referred for psychological assessment because “he laughs all the time, gives away all that he has, never seems to be depressed, but will only work one day a year.” Santa could be described as having “post-juvenile obesity syndrome” and alcoholism might be suspected considering “the jovial nature of the client,” as well as “the glowing nose of his pet reindeer.” Bard speculated that Santa’s black gloves and rugged backpack could suggest “unconscious sadomasochistic involvement,” while his “long soft head cover with white rabbit fur and feminine looking rouged cheeks might be interpreted as “sexual identity confusion.”   

Bard also imagined that Santa wouldn’t take the evaluation very seriously and would probably laugh, touch the side of his nose, and try to give the examiner small gifts. Bard concluded that Santa would most likely be diagnosed as having “an overwhelming preoccupation with happiness, kindness and generosity accompanied by a denial of the harsh realities of the everyday world.” He also predicted that Santa would have “difficulty coping on an extended basis in the real world”—a conclusion not all that different from Macy’s villainous Sawyer.

Even illustrations of Santa have been psychoanalyzed. Romanian psychologist and Rorschach Inkblot Test specialist Lucia Grosaru has provided a psychological interpretation of cartoonist Thomas Nast’s iconic image of St. Nick. Besides Santa’s obvious jolly presentation, Grosaru  points to his pipe as a sign of possible “oral dependency” and a desire to regress to a earlier developmental stage where he felt safer.

According to Grosaru, Santa’s “little round belly” indicates greed and a probable fear of deprivation. His prominent belt suggests that Santa might be a control freak. Belts like Santa’s symbolize authority and may serve as a demarcation between thinking and feelings. Thus Santa may deny bodily needs and sexual impulses.   

Grosaru also discerns more than a little obsessive-compulsiveness. Who else would make such an enormous list and check it twice. Santa’s large hands suggest a desire for power and his facial hair signals mature sexuality, although Grosaru also says that his feminine hat may be a way to hide his masculinity. I’m not sure why psychologists fixate upon Santa’s hat, but to paraphrase Freud, sometimes a hat is just a velveteen and fur head covering.

Scruitiny of other holiday classics

Other Christmas figures haven’t escaped psychology’s scrutiny either. Karen Eveland from Texas A&M wrote a paper describing what a psychological evaluation of Ebenezer Scrooge would look like for her abnormal psychology class. She imagines Scrooge’s nephew Fred might have questioned his uncle’s competency after he suddenly started giving away his great wealth. Significant background data for such an assessment would include Scrooge’s isolated childhood, poor relationship with his father, loss of his beloved sister and the termination of his engagement, due to his growing preoccupation with money. Scrooge also experienced the recent loss of his only friend—Jacob Marley.  

After Scrooge’s supposed encounter with the ghosts, Eveland says she would have ruled out bipolar disorder, due to Scrooge’s ability to remain calm and his lack of depressive symptoms. The sudden onset and short duration of the hallucinations and delusions wasn’t consistent with a schizophrenia diagnosis. Eveland concluded that Scrooge, probably suffered from a “Brief Psychotic Disorder.” She suggested that “some type of food poisoning” might have been responsible. She also speculates that this psychosis was superimposed over an underlying obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, as evidenced by hoarding money and compulsive work habits. Unlike Santa, she predicted that Scrooge would be found competent and able to  “assess the risks of his behavior.”

Some of the founders of modern American psychology have rather odd Santa Claus associations. In 1920 John B. Watson, former American Psychological Association (APA) president and the acknowledged founder of radical behaviorism, conducted his famous Little Albert experiment. Along with his graduate student, Rosalie Rayner, Watson classically conditioned nine-month old Little Albert to fear a white rat. The study reported that this fear response generalized so that it was also elicited by a rabbit, a furry dog, a seal-skin coat and even when Watson appeared in front of Little Albert wearing a Santa Claus mask with white cotton balls as his beard. The notorious Watson, who was later fired from Johns Hopkins University for having an affair with Rayner actual wore a Santa mask.

I personally find it hard to believe that testing a Santa Claus mask was part of their original experimental protocol. The mask just must have been one of many objects lying around Watson’s lab at the time, which of course begs the question: What was it‘s intended use?

Back in the day (a phrase I hardily dislike) every fledgling graduate student in psychology had to take a course in something called History and Systems. For years, one of the textbooks employed was a massive and difficult to decipher 1929 work entitled "A History of Experimental Psychology." Ironically, this book, which bored several generations of psychologists, was written by famed Harvard psychologist Edwin G. Boring. Boring, another APA president, worked at Harvard for 27 years. All of this would remain academic had not the Center for the History of Psychology at The University of Akron recently uncovered some fascinating old photos of Boring dressed up as a very frightening looking Santa Claus, sporting full St. Nick regalia. If Watson in his cheesy cotton ball mask had scared Little Albert, Boring would have made him wet his pants. Boring, who had four children of his own, evidently played Santa at the 1940 Harvard Christmas party. 

12 Neuroses of Christmas

Psychologist have also tried to satirize the Christmas holiday with a number of faux disorders. A few years ago, Psychology Today blogger Bruce Kluger wrote, “This holiday season, sugarplums won't be the only things dancing in our heads” and proceeded to describe what he called the 12 Neuroses of Christmas. He says that he was inspired by all of those self-help authors who “have bent themselves into a pop-psych pretzel trying to identify and cure a battery of seasonal ailments.” Among my favorites is his “Orderline Personality Disorder” which describes compulsive home shopping, although I think it should be updated to “Order Online Personality Disorder” for all of us Amazon aficionados. I also liked his Saksual Dysfunction (disappointment that your gift didn’t come from Saks Fifth Avenue), Angoraphobia (fear of receiving another homemade sweater) and North-Polar Disorder (chronic fear that someone is on your roof).

Psychologists have also examined the significance of decorating your house for Christmas. Carol Werner from the University of Utah and her colleagues found that people use Christmas  decorations as a way of communicating their accessibility to neighbors. While they don’t classify this as a disorder, it does sound rather pathetic.

Of course if you take this to excess, as Clark Griswold did in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, you run the risk of being diagnosed with CLA—Christmas Lights Addiction. In 2004, psychologist John M. Grohol described this disorder in a satirical piece for The Psych Central Report.  

As I previously mentioned in this blog, in 2010, Simon Fraser University psychologists had some disappointing news for those of us who like to decorate for Christmas. They studied the effects of Christmas displays on mood, self-esteem and feeling of inclusion. While such displays had positive benefits for these factors for Christians, the same displays were harmful to non-Christians.

Analyzing Christmas cards

Besides our lights and home decorations, David Holmes, a psychologist from England’s Manchester University says that our choice of a specific Christmas card inevitably reflects the personality of the sender. To psychologists, pretty much everything people do is a projective test. They just love to interpret things such as inkblots, dreams, made-up stories, drawings, —basically anything you do (or fail to do). As an example of how this applies to Christmas cards, Holmes says that people who find it difficult to express their feelings often hide their timidity behind the humor of a comic card. Introverted people are drawn to cards that picture Christmas trees, especially those that are devoid of baubles or presents. Winterscapes are sure signs of loners, as are cool colors such as silver, white and blue. Holmes suggests that people who value tradition often send the sort of cards their parents did, often preferring cozy fireplace scenes that evoke the past.

Psychologist Carole Slotterback, from the University of Scranton, also analyzed nearly 1,200 letters to Santa that were sent to the post office in economically challenged Scranton, PA. These letters ranged from the touching to the hilarious. Everything isn’t necessarily candy canes and sugar plums in these letters. Slotterback found that up to 6% of the letters contained what she called "family requests," such as an appeal for a sick relative to recover or for less family conflict. One dark letter even included a death threat to Santa.

Although nearly every letter asked for things, Slotterback says that there was a noticeable and surprising lack of politeness, except if the child wanted a pet. Pets apparently belong to a special class of requests that require additional obsequiousness.

Gender roles at Christmas

To further drain the magic and mystery out of Christmas, psychologists Tim Kasser and Kennon Sheldon from Knox College in Galesburg, IL asked the question, “What makes for a Merry Christmas?" in a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. They surveyed 118 adults and concluded that “more happiness was reported when family and religious experiences were especially salient, and lower well-being occurred when spending money and receiving gifts predominated.” Other factors that correlated with happiness were being older and being male and engaging in environmentally conscious practices during the holiday. This fit in nicely with my wife’s belief that women take the brunt of the work and stress of Christmas as well as Thanksgiving and other holidays. Everyone else gets to regress and enjoy themselves, while women typically handle the cooking and baking and the lion’s share of the shopping and gift wrapping, while simultaneously keeping the everyday routines running. It’s no surprise that many women resent everyone else’s holly-jolly attitude while they are breaking their backs. 

Psychosexual stages of the holidays  

But psychologists are not through psychoanalyzing Christmas yet. Some have speculated where it fits into Freud’s psychosexual stages. Melanie Wallendorf from the University of Arizona and Eric J. Arnould from the University of Colorado have described Christmas as America’s anal retentive holiday with its emphasis on greed, materialism and the acquisition and retention of goods. They sandwich Christmas between Thanksgiving, the equivalent of Freud’s oral stage of development with its emphasis on eating and “oral incorporation,” and Americas genitally-preoccupied and sexually-charged New Year’s Eve celebration.

Believing in Santa—destructive or beneficial?

Finally there are all those psychologists who argue over whether encouraging a belief in Santa is destructive or beneficial for children. I won’t rehash all of their arguments and counter arguments. Suffice it to say that many still echo the sentiments of Susan’s cynical mother, Doris, in "A Miracle on 34th Street." The divorced and traumatized Doris maintained that a belief in Santa harms children by “filling them full of fairy tales” so that they consider life “a fantasy instead of a reality.” To so-called experts who believe this malarkey, I can only respond: “Psy-cho-lo-gist! Where'd you graduate from, some correspondence school?