What Color is Christmas, or what color are other winter holidays? What would your answer be? Ask your friends and family this question. Chances are high that the answers are going to be – red and green.
Color is visible to the human eye because of how it reflects, bends, and refracts through particles and objects. It turned out that color and light enter our bodies not only through our eyes! Scientists have recently discovered that many animals – including human beings – do have specialized light-detecting molecules in unexpected places, outside of the eyes. These “extraocular photoreceptors” are usually found in the central nervous system or in the skin, and also in internal organs. What are light-sensing molecules doing once light enters through our skin? It is thought that they activate the release of various chemicals and enzymes that affect how we feel.
In a 2005 review on chromotherapy, there is this explanation the phenomenon of color: “Light is electromagnetic radiation, which is the fluctuation of electric and magnetic fields in nature. In other words, light is energy, and the phenomenon of color is a product of the interaction of energy and matter.”
Each color has its own wavelength, frequency, and quantity of energy. All colors that we can see fall on the visible spectrum of light, and they have their own electromagnetic frequencies.
So, why winter holidays tend to be associated with red and green for most people? It seems that the choice of these colors is rooted in the wisdom of our body and in ancient traditions reflecting it. In winter when the days are dull, cold, and short, instinctively we want to bring balance to our life – and we do it by embracing more red, the warmest color of all. Red is energy-boosting, life-giving, and joyful; it increases appetite, promotes stamina, passion, and blood circulation.
Have you ever heard of red-light therapy? Red light therapy involves having low-power red light wavelengths emitted directly through the skin, although this process cannot be felt and isn’t painful because it doesn’t produce any heat.
Red light can be absorbed into the skin to a depth of about eight to 10 millimeters, at which point it has positive effects on cellular energy and multiple nervous system and metabolic processes.
What about green color? Green color is associated with the heart chakra and tied to healing, balance, love, grounding, nature, growth, and health. We all need these to carry on through winter, and so red and green colors help us bring more Love, Joy, and Peace.
Happy Winter Holidays!
My Indigo Sun team
