Holidays make us nostalgic, which increases our feelings of fellowship. This leads to more giving:

Compared with control groups, those encouraged to wax nostalgic planned to donate and volunteer more and scored higher on tests of empathy. In a final experiment, a nostalgic pitch (“Restoring the Past for the Children of Wenchuan”) led to greater donations than a forward-looking one (“Build the Future…”).

When we’re nostalgic, we think about interactions with significant others in a sentimentalized past, and those social memories boost feelings of fellowship, researchers suggested.

Source: WSJ

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