I’ve never had a dear, close friend who couldn’t make me laugh until it hurt.

As l look back over the years and over the friends, that’s the main quality that attracted me to them in the first place.

Since I have the good fortune of working from home, I spend most of my hours with a friend who makes me laugh every day – our dog, Snuffy.

I won’t torture you with all the funny dog stories. (That would be like the stranger you meet who shows you pictures of their grandchildren.)

What I will tell you is that laughter is the main thing missing from all the depressed people I have ever met.

The natural question that came up for me was: “Did the depression cause them to stop laughing, or did the lack of laughter cause depression?”

The answer I came up with is: It doesn’t matter!

The antidote to depression is always the same – laughter.

Some people need training in laughter. They have forgotten the child like quality we all have. It just needs to be coaxed out to play.

Reminds me of a story . . .

Back in my radio days I was interviewing for a job in Wilkes-Barre, PA and the program director said he wanted a morning man who could tell funny jokes on the radio. I told him I wasn’t a joke teller, per say. He said he would provide me with some generic joke sheets and I could customize them for my show. I told 50 jokes the first day. I would love to have a recording of that program to remember how bad it really was.

The good news that came out of this daily joke hunt was that I now filtered for funny – at least funny for me. This trained me to laugh on a daily basis.

When I look back on any gloomy period in my life (and we all have them), laughter was suspended.

A number of people during the holidays find their way into a dark corner and hide themselves from laughter. The Grinch has stolen their mirth.

The story of journalist, Norman Cousins has been well documented in the book and movie, Anatomy of an Illness. Cousins nursed himself from the brink of death back to health by training himself to laugh by watching funny movies. He said, “”I made the joyous discovery that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep,” he reported. “When the pain-killing effect of the laughter wore off, we would switch on the motion picture projector again and not infrequently, it would lead to another pain-free interval.”

If you are experiencing the holiday blues, you are in pain. There is a reason this ancient proverb has endured: Laughter is the best medicine.

You can look for ways to justify your depression or you can take that same energy and pursue laughter.

I would certainly recommend that you seek counseling if you find yourself severely depressed. I would also note that any recovery would be ably assisted by laughter.

I’ll leave you with this holiday suggestion: Let Ho, Ho, Ho remind you to Ha, Ha, Ha.

All the best,

John

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