The spirit of silly
IT’S THE SEASON TO BE SILLY AND EVEN IF IT’S A QUIETER AFFAIR THIS YEAR THERE’S NO REASON TO PARE BACK THE PLAYFULNESS
My childhood home was a silly house. My father’s family were a pretty eccentric lot who liked dressing up, singing, playing pranks and raucous parlour games. As far back as I can remember, Dad would recite daft riddles, break into song or do a silly walk to crack a teenage sulk, and would regularly gather the family to watch Monty Python when we were way too young to understand ( but couldn’t stop laughing at how much it made him howl). It makes me smile when I think about it now but, as a biologically silly person myself, also a bit sad. It’s been a tough year and with this Christmas looking like it’s going to be quite different for many of us, I’m worried that silliness might get forgotten, or even feel a bit wrong.
Ironically, when there’s serious stuff going on and you least feel like being humorous, doing something that makes you laugh is one of the most effective ways to reduce stress and make you feel better.
The lightness we feel when we forget our worries and inhibitions and laugh until our belly hurts is caused by the release of dopamine, the happiness neurotransmitter in the brain. “Our muscles relax, our bodies feel lighter, our frowns
dissolve and we smile,” says
Gael Lindenfield, psychotherapist and author of How to Feel Good in
Difficult Times (Trigger Publishing). Laughter fires you up and then calms down the stress response leading to that relaxed, almost light-headed feeling you get when you’ve been laughing hard.
COMEDY CURE
Most of us like a bit of silliness. It can be no coincidence that in early Autumn when the nights were drawing in and the news was all talk of the second wave, the new series of Bake Off hit peak viewing figures for Channel 4. With Matt Lucas joining the crew and opening the series with his spoof Boris Johnson address, it was an injection of silliness that the nation needed.
In a year when our lives were turned upside down almost overnight it was heartening to see how so many of us found a way to inject some humour into the situation. Whether it was sharing silly memes, practising TikTok dances with our kids or gathering distant friends and relatives for a wine-fuelled Zoom quiz, the shared need for laughter was tangible.
Gael Lindenfield admits that events of the past year have tested her mental strength and says the silly moments she’s shared with her grandchildren have been a lifeline. “I’m in the vulnerable category and at the start of the pandemic I found myself constantly at the mercy of frightening scenarios that would come flooding into my mind,” she says. “I realised that the times when I was most free from these haunting images was when I was playing silly games with my four grandchildren. Luckily, my family live nearby and we became a safe bubble. As I’m able to see them regularly, these injections of silliness help to keep my ‘black dog’ virus moods at bay.”
Children are an obvious conduit for silly behaviour. You only need to consider how many times they laugh a day compared with adults »
( hundreds compared with less than 20, respectively) to see that spending time with little ones will help to cheer you up. We don’t all have young relatives or friends to play with but most of us have a goofy (read ‘childish!’) friend or family member and they’re the people to seek out when you need a dose of silly. “Ring up a funny friend. Even if you don’t always get their jokes, their laughter and mood will infect you,” says Gael.
ACTS OF SILLINESS
Watching comedy, reading a funny book or listening to a hilarious podcast will also get you in the mood for being silly. From Roald Dahl and David Walliams to Miranda and Victoria Wood, many of our most treasured household names sit firmly on the silly spectrum and help remind us that you’re never too grown up to be daft. Proving how it’s possible to be humorous even when facing the most difficult times, the much-loved and hilariously funny children’s author and poet, Michael Rosen, recently described his long recovery after contracting Covid 19 and how he had to learn to walk again using a stick, which he nicknamed Sticky McStick Stick.
If you’re used to big, lively family gatherings at Christmas and are worried that things might be a little quiet and sedate this year, then rest assured there are plenty of ways to have fun in smaller numbers
(see left). “Sharing corny cracker jokes and playing silly games whilst getting tipsy in the company of a small group of people we love and feel comfortable with is often more relaxing than being in a big group,” says Gael, who also recommends doing other activities that stimulate the happiness hormones, like going for a brisk walk, doing some physical exercise or just thinking back to a time when you were laughing uncontrollably, which can itself lead to a fit of giggles.
So, as we say goodbye to 2020, try to keep the spirit of silliness alive in whatever way that works best for you. For me, it will be a combination of fancy-dress charades, a Christmas Zoom quiz with distanced friends and relatives and back-to-back Miranda and
Modern Family with a glass of good wine. It makes me smile just thinking about it.
Laughter fires you up and calms you down