One-minute lecture: Why are the smells of spruce and gingerbread associated with Christmas?
Why do the smells of spruce and gingerbread evoke Christmas? This is explained by Kristjan Port, Professor of Health Behaviour and Sport Biology at Tallinn University.
“The scent of spruce and candlelight, where did that little elf come from?” These song lyrics usually do not come to mind in the middle of summer, but they often resurface when we smell gingerbread. Why is that?
Close your eyes for a moment and then open them again. The world around you is full of details that you are able to name and describe precisely. This is a process of higher nervous activity, in which nerve signals coming from the eyes are linked with memory to create an explanatory image of the world around you.
Animals have less information in their visual field. They do not see as many colors as humans, and their brains are somewhat simpler, but they have a very well-developed sense of smell. When animals perceive the world, their sense of smell is directly connected to memory and emotions, without higher-level explanatory mechanisms. They see a similar visual image to what we see, but without words. There are far more details in smells, and emotions are especially important — fear, pleasantness, enjoyment, and perhaps also appetite.
We have the same mechanisms, but our sense of smell is much weaker. We are not very good at distinguishing the different scents contained within the smell of gingerbread, but we do perceive the emotions — provided that we have experienced them before. For example, while putting up and decorating the Christmas tree together, baking gingerbread together, sharing warm feelings toward one another and a sense of anticipation. Only then does the smell of gingerbread awaken that pleasant feeling within us.