Something You Should Know
The Extraordinary Power of Solitude & Christmas Mysteries Revealed
25 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
today on Something You Should Know. We say Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Easter, so why do we say Merry Christmas? Then, being connected with other people is great, but there's also some magic in solitude.
You know, solitude is often thought of as an empty place, right?
Chapter 2: Why do we say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Christmas?
A place where there's nothing to do and all that's there is rumination and loneliness and anxiety. But solitude can be a full place. It could be a place that you can fill with what you choose to put there.
Also, how owning a pet can make some people much more attractive. And how we celebrate Christmas. Things have changed a lot over time.
Chapter 3: What are the psychological benefits of choosing solitude?
After World War II, we shifted Christmas to the modern, what I would call the Coca-Cola version of Christmas, which is the presents, the tree, the chimney, parts of the story that had always been there, but were given additional weight. All this today on Something You Should Know.
Ah, the Regency era. You might know it as the time when Bridgerton takes place, or as the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar History's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal.
Listen to Vulgar History, Regency era, wherever you get podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.
Hi, and welcome to our Christmas Day episode of Something You Should Know. And we start today with this whole idea of Merry Christmas. Because when you think about it, we say Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Valentine's Day. But we say Merry Christmas. Why is that? Well, the first use of the term Merry Christmas goes back quite a ways. It seems to have started perhaps in the 1500s.
It was also written in a letter by an English admiral in 1699.
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Chapter 4: How can solitude enhance personal growth and creativity?
The same phrase, Merry Christmas, appears in the first Christmas card produced in England in the 1800s. Charles Dickens used it in his book A Christmas Carol in 1843. Ebenezer Scrooge says, If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.
The phrase Merry Christmas caught on more in America than in Britain, perhaps because merry also means tipsy or drunk in Britain. There they say Happy Christmas mostly. In C. Clement Moore's book Twas the Night Before Christmas, written in 1823, it originally ended Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night, but was changed by the editors in later editions to Merry Christmas.
And that is something you should know. The holidays are all about togetherness. For many of us, it's the one time of year we gather with friends and family we rarely see otherwise. One of the things that makes this season feel so special is all those people. And we've talked plenty on this show about the importance of connecting with others.
But some people feel over-connected this time of year, like they barely get a moment to themselves. And that raises an interesting point. Solitude isn't a bad thing. In fact, spending time alone can be surprisingly good for you. My guest, Robert Coplin, has spent more than 30 years studying the power of being alone.
He's a psychologist, researcher, and teacher, and author of the book, The Joy of Solitude, How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. He's here to explain why solitude matters and how to make it a healthy part of your life. Hi, Robert. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Mike. I'm so glad to be here.
So we have talked so many times, had so many guests on talking about the importance of social connection, that having friends and family and being part of a social group is good for your mental health. It's good for your physical health. It's just a good thing. And you're talking about spending more time alone, that we need time alone.
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Chapter 5: What transformations has the concept of Santa Claus undergone over time?
Is it your sense that people are not getting enough alone time?
Yeah, that's one of the issues that we've actually explored over the last two years because, I mean, historically we've been, and for good reason, really concerned about people who feel like they're getting too much solitude, right? So that's what loneliness is. It's the feeling that you are not getting enough social connection. You're not getting enough social interaction.
It's a discrepancy between your social life that you would like and this, you know, your perception of your actual social life. And when that's not living up to your social needs, so you feel lonely. And it's often equated to the feeling that you're getting too much solitude. And that's really important to study.
Over the last few years we've also studied their sort of new idea that maybe it's also possible to feel like you're not getting enough solitude. And so this is kind of like the mirror image of loneliness and because that word didn't exist in the English language to even define that term, we made one up. We call it a loneliness and that's the feeling that we are not getting enough time alone.
It's a discrepancy between the quality and the quantity of the solitary time that we would like to have and what we are actually experiencing.
Well, how would you know? It would seem that you would know whether you feel like you're getting enough or not getting enough solitude and that it would be easy to fix, particularly if you needed more solitude, you would just close the door and lock it and then people can't bother you.
That's a fair response. But if you don't know that it's a thing, if you don't know that it's possible to feel more stressed or more anxious or more sad or more angry because you're not getting enough solitude, if you don't know that that's even a possibility, that it can impact you like that, it can be difficult to actually understand why you're feeling stressed.
And when we've interviewed people, that's a common thing that they said. They would feel stressed, they'd feel anxious, they'd feel angry, and they just wouldn't know why. And when we did some experiments and we did some research on it, It turns out that feeling like you're not getting enough time alone can lead to exactly those feelings. It can make you feel sad. It can make you feel frustrated.
It can make you feel angry. And just giving a name to it and raising awareness at least allows for the possibility that people will say, oh, okay, so now I understand why I'm feeling so stressful and maybe I should just close the door and give myself a little bit of extra alone time each day.
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Chapter 6: How does pet ownership influence romantic attraction?
I mean, if you, but can you ever have too much? Or as long as it feels right, it's right.
Yes. No, I agree that we should be putting limits both on socializing and on solitude, right? So for some people, especially if you are extremely extroverted, you're a social butterfly, you always want to be around people, you will go out of your way to avoid any time by yourself.
And that's when I think people could use a little push to spend a little bit of extra time alone, even if they don't think they're going to enjoy it. We tend to be pretty poor predictors of how we're going to enjoy social and solitary experiences.
So my advice for extroverts and sociable people who really spend most of their time and enjoy being with other people, that's great, and please go and do that, but also give yourself a little bit of a push to spend time by yourself and build up those solitude muscles. And then you have some people who really do enjoy spending that time alone, right?
They enjoy the quiet time, they enjoy doing their own things, and maybe they're less comfortable when they're with other people. And for people like that, I would say give yourself a little bit of a push to go interact with other people.
You might not think that you're going to enjoy it, but it turns out even for people who are introverted and socially anxious and feel nervous about interacting even with strangers, even a short interaction with a stranger raises our mood and makes us feel better. So I think all of us could probably use a slight push in one direction or the other.
But do you think that people who don't have enough solitude like the mother with three kids, knows it? Or are there people who don't have enough solitude but are completely oblivious to that idea that they, no, I have plenty of time alone, I'm fine.
Yeah, I mean, I like to hope that over the last few years, we've tried to sort of popularize the idea that it could be a problem to not get enough time alone. Some really interesting research suggests that when you are feeling like you want more alone time, you tend to blame the people around you.
So when one member of a romantic couple feels like they are lonely, that they don't have enough alone time, it makes them more angry at their romantic partner. And when a manager at work is feeling like they're overwhelmed and not having a moment to themselves, they tend to have more harsh interactions with their employees. So it certainly comes out in maybe even unexpected ways.
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Chapter 7: What role does solitude play in managing stress and anxiety?
Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, wherever you get your podcasts.
Since we're publishing this episode on Christmas, it seems only right to wrap things up with one last Christmas segment, and this time about Santa Claus himself. And not the Hallmark version. My guest Joe Beal is the founder and CEO of Microcosm Publishing, and he has researched and written a book called A People's Guide to Santa Claus, The Secret History of Christmas from St.
Nick to Krampus and Yule. He's dug into some surprising, sometimes wild, backstories of Santa, and he's here to share what he found. Hi, Joe. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hello. Thanks for having me. Sure. So I know around the world there are variations of the story about Santa Claus and St. Nicholas and who he is and where he came from. But is it that they all have a similar theme?
It's somewhat similar or not?
There's some similarity. I mean, and that's a good way of putting it, that there's not a lot of uniformity. I mean, in some cultures, Santa Claus is more of a punishing character where you're scared into submission and great behavior. And then in other cultures, you're rewarded into good behavior. And so I think that's probably the biggest fundamental difference.
But then in many cultures, Santa Claus is really like a mischievous figure. That's really... That's where it gets you because... you know in say Iceland or a lot of parts of Eastern Europe to this day you know that there's really a deeply held belief that you know Santa Claus is really there to make trouble and has a whole cast of characters that assist him with that and so who is Santa
Well, and again, this is another hotly disputed item because in the original Santa Claus was St. Nick, one of many St. Nicks in Roman Christianity. But again, this is somebody that...
was never known to exist or there was there's no written record of him existing during his lifetime nobody began writing about him until 400 years after he would have lived so he would have lived towards the end of the third century you know after Christ but that's further complicated because
know rome had occupied the region at the time so there they weren't keeping a lot of birth records about you know christian bishops which he was one he was a very young bishop allegedly in the folklore he had been captured from his you know he was from an area called mira and he was put in a roman prison for a very long time again all that without records we don't know exactly how long
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