Dr's Casebook: The essence of A Christmas Carol

Performer Jonathan Hanks (C), playing Ebenezer Scrooge, takes part in a dress rehearsal of Northern Ballet's production of "A Christmas Carol", based on the novel by Charles Dickens, in the Lyceum Theatre in Sheffield, on November 6, 2024. (Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images)

In his masterpiece A Christmas Carol the great Charles Dickens gave us a wonderful image of the Victorian Christmas. He tells of the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge who despises the Christmas Festivities, but after his redemption by the three ghosts of Christmas, he becomes a happy, generous man.

Dr Keith Souter writes: You may have seen that vandals broke up the gravestone of Ebenezer Scrooge in a Shrewsbury cemetery a few weeks ago. But happily, the gravestone, which was left from a film of the story made in the 80s, has been restored.

Christmas is of course the season to be happy. Interestingly, research from one of the largest heart studies ever carried out suggests that feeling happy is good for you and that it is almost infectious.

Curiously, it seems that if you are happy, you are likely to have happy friends.

Even more surprisingly, the friends of your friends are also likely to be happy. That is good news, because happiness does seem to have a protective effect on the heart.

The Framingham Heart Study is one of the longest research studies on heart health. It began by following about 5000 people in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1948. The study continues to this day and now includes descendants of those in the original group. The researchers identified almost 5000 children of the original participants and followed them, and their friendship ties up over a 20 year period, from 1983 to 2003.

They found that a person’s happiness is most likely to boost the happiness levels in people closest to him, their partners, relatives, neighbours, and friends. But curiously, if one person is happy, that increases the chances of happiness in a friend living within a mile by 25 percent. They also discovered an even more curious ‘cascade effect.’ Effectively, a friend of the friend has almost a ten per cent higher likelihood of being happy, and a friend of that friend has a six percent increased chance.

The essence of it all seems to be that happiness does seem to spread outwards through three degrees of separation. But the other message is that the higher your happiness level the less likely you are to have a heart attack. It is quite a cheering thought for Christmas. So, like Ebenezer Scrooge cast away the ‘Bah Humbug! And be happy this season.