Christmas Spirit
3 years, 7 months, 2 days, 20 hours
19 December 2025
Is the giving and receiving of stuff what truly makes for happiness?
‘Unless…someone cares’ says The Lorax, in a film perhaps intended for children but that I urge every adult should watch during the festive break almost upon us.
For the film is not just about caring for the beautiful world we are so fortunate to live in, but about recognising what is important, and what is not. The film invites us to ask, what truly makes us happy?
Of course, basic needs come first - water, food, shelter, good health. Hence the importance of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to strive for everyone to have those basic needs met.
But then, for the billions of us lucky enough to be able to live comfortably, what else do we need? Unfortunately, it seems we usually want more stuff, an urge immortalised in the lyrics of Santa Baby: 'I want a yacht and really that’s not a lot’.
Buying things for other people, just because that is what we do at this time of year, exemplifies the crazy psychology of our consumerist society. It even entails the angst of desperately trying to think of something to buy someone, and rushing around at the last minute to do so, because giving stuff is apparently how we show we care. That is exactly what I have been doing this week.
But is the giving and receiving of stuff what truly makes for happiness? Let me posit instead, that perhaps true happiness is the joy of being and the joy of discovering. The joy of everything nature gives us, from forests and pheasants, to oceans and orchids. The joy of things in the mind, from memories to the moment. The joy of relationships, of connection and of love.
The Economist in August reported a study that misery used to peak in midlife, but ’now youngsters are the saddest’. I doubt that the solution to that is giving young people more stuff.
So my gift to you, dear readers, is simply this food for thought.