When people who did not celebrate Christmas or who did not identify as Christian filled out surveys about their moods while in the same room as a small Christmas tree, they reported less self-assurance and fewer positive feelings than if they hadn't been reminded of the holiday, according to a new study.
The university students didn't know the study was about Christmas, said study researcher Michael Schmitt, a social psychologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. Nonetheless, he said, the presence of the tree caused non-celebrators and non-Christians to feel subtly excluded.
"Simply having this 12-inch Christmas tree in the room with them made them feel less included in the university as a whole, which to me is a pretty powerful effect from one 12-inch Christmas tree in one psychology lab," Schmitt told LiveScience.
[...]
In both versions of the study, the Christmas tree failed to spread holiday cheer equally. Non-celebrators reported fewer positive feelings and less self-assurance in the Christmas room. Christians and celebrators, on the other hand, were mostly cheered by the tree, with one exception: Celebrators reported feeling more guilt when they were in the Christmas room. That finding suggests that even for Christmas-lovers, the holiday can be stressful, Schmitt said.
[...]
"I don't think it's really going to undermine anyone's experience of Christmas to tone it down," he said. "We're not suggesting 'no Christmas' or 'no Christmas displays at all,' but in contexts where we really do value respecting and including diversity in terms of religion, the safest option is not to have these kinds of displays."
[Live Science]
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