Want To Do Something Good For Your Health? Try Being Generous

People donate money during a flash football game organized by Arlington High School football player Max Gray, 18, to raise money for Jonielle Spiller, the mother of youth football player Jovon “Jo Jo” Mangual, 13, who died during the Oso mudslide, in Arlington. Jason Redmond/Reuters

By Ashley Whillans, University of British Columbia

Every day, we are confronted with choices about how to spend our money. Whether it’s thinking about picking up the tab at a group lunch or when a charity calls asking for a donation, we are faced with the decision to behave generously or not.

Research suggests that spending money on others can improve happiness, but can it also improve your physical health?

There is some evidence that donating time can improve physical health, but no one has looked at whether donating money has the same effect.

US: Gamers to Play 'The Legend of Zelda' for 150 Consecutive Hours to Raise Funds for Charity

Image via Zeldathon.net

December 27 to January 2, more than 50 gamers will play "The Legend of Zelda" for 150 consecutive hours to raise money for HelpHOPELive, a top-ranked charity that supports fundraising campaigns for people with unmet medical and related expenses due to cell and organ transplants or catastrophic injuries and illnesses. The Zelda marathon, named "Zeldathon Hope," will kick off at4 p.m. on Dec. 27 to a live audience of thousands on Twitch, the world's leading video game streaming platform.

How The Nazis Co-Opted Christmas

A postcard depicts Adolf Hitler posing with a child and a Christmas tree. Author provided

By Joe Perry, Georgia State University

In 1921, in a Munich beer hall, newly appointed Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler gave a Christmas speech to an excited crowd.

According to undercover police observers, 4,000 supporters cheered when Hitler condemned “the cowardly Jews for breaking the world-liberator on the cross” and swore “not to rest until the Jews…lay shattered on the ground.” Later, the crowd sang holiday carols and nationalist hymns around a Christmas tree. Working-class attendees received charitable gifts.

For Germans in the 1920s and 1930s, this combination of familiar holiday observance, nationalist propaganda and anti-Semitism was hardly unusual. As the Nazi party grew in size and scope – and eventually took power in 1933 – committed propagandists worked to further “Nazify” Christmas. Redefining familiar traditions and designing new symbols and rituals, they hoped to channel the main tenets of National Socialism through the popular holiday.

Given state control of public life, it’s not surprising that Nazi officials were successful in promoting and propagating their version of Christmas through repeated radio broadcasts and news articles.

But under any totalitarian regime, there can be a wide disparity between public and private life, between the rituals of the city square and those of the home. In my research, I was interested in how Nazi symbols and rituals penetrated private, family festivities – away from the gaze of party leaders.

While some Germans did resist the heavy-handed, politicized appropriation of Germany’s favorite holiday, many actually embraced a Nazified holiday that evoked the family’s place in the “racial state,” free of Jews and other outsiders.

Four Films That Capture The Nightmare Of Christmas

By Bruce Bennett, Lancaster University

Forgive me, I’m about to go all Scrooge. Christmas, you see, is a particularly grim time of year. Rolling around with grinding, Groundhog Day relentlessness, it is an interval of dark days and long nights, bad music, kitsch clothing and decor, enforced jollity, stilted family gatherings, hyper-commercialism, over-consumption and tiresome end-of-year round-up articles.

But there’s no escape. As is demonstrated by Christmas with the Kranks (2004), in which a couple decide to avoid Christmas by going on a Caribbean holiday only to find themselves shunned by their appalled neighbours and children, participation in this ritual is mandatory.

And it drags on, too. As folk-singer, Loudon Wainwright III observes in Suddenly It’s Christmas, the joy lasts for weeks:

When they say “Season’s greetings” They mean just what they say:
It’s a season, it’s a marathon,
Retail eternity.

The Christmas film is almost as old as the medium of cinema itself – there are hundreds of them. Perhaps the first, by Brighton film-maker George Smith, dates from 1898. Few truly capture the real spirit of Christmas, but here are four that do.

Could A Truth Commission Have Saved The Star Wars Universe From Another Conflict?

If only Desmond Tutu were here… Lucasfilm

By James Sweeney, Lancaster University

A brutal regime is at last brought to its knees, its key leaders start fighting among themselves, and the old tyrant is killed without trial. Libya in 2011? No: the world of Star Wars at the close of Return of the Jedi.

The latest film, Star Wars: The Force Awakens was released last week (in case you hadn’t noticed). It is set in precisely the sort of conflicted environment that we see when contemporary totalitarian regimes collapse, be it the former Soviet Union, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya or Egypt.

#LGBT - New Songs Make a Positive Statement for Transgender Artist [Video Included]

Rizi Timane -- recording artist, author, actor, and life coach to the transgender community -- has just released three new trans-affirmative singles: "Yeah! It Feels Good to Finally Be Me," "Let's Make Love," and "I'm Beautiful," all of which are available for download from iTunes and at www.rizitimane.com.