Word: gloomed
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...holidays, they say, and especially Christmas, inflame neurosis, trigger depression, accentuate loneliness. The very expectation of joy becomes a source of gloom. Adults get pressured into the hypocrisy of mingling with people they do not like and going to churches they do not believe in. Children get confused by the Santa hokum; they wind up either addicted to greed by too many presents or ridden with envy by too few. Families obliged to reassemble are rent by old grudges set to festering again. Furthermore, since Christmas dominates the marathon Thanksgiving-to-New Year's celebrations, non-Christians get painful...
...church in the 4th century picked, as Christmas Day, exactly the date that signaled the end of the Roman Saturnalia. The origin of the celebrations at least raises the question of which came first, seasonal malaise or the celebrations? Could it be that the rituals cure far more gloom than they precipitate? Surely such issues should not be abdicated entirely to social pathologists...
...studied these groups agree that most cult members are in some sort of emotional trouble before they join. Says Dr. Margaret Thaler Singer, a psychologist at Berkeley: "About one-third are very psychologically distressed people. The other two-thirds are relatively average people, but in a period of depression, gloom, being at loose ends." Such people are vulnerable to well-planned recruitment techniques. These usually involve displays of effusive affection and understanding, or "love bombing," as one psychiatrist puts it. Once recruits start going to meetings, they are frequently subjected to various drills and disciplines that weary them both physically...
Quaint as that query may sound to an American, the impending shutdown of the venerable Times and Sunday Times of London is no footling affair to an Englishman. The gloom among Britain's Establishment could be as thick as suet pudding if the Times (circ. 293,000)-the nation's newspaper of record and the favorite forum of impassioned letter writers -suspends publication this week, as now seems likely. Equally wretched will be the 1.4 million readers who look to the Sunday Times for its weekly compendium of news coverage and lively analysis...
...bewitching blur the ball was hurriedly snapped, placed down and kicked, rising into the twilight and fading out to the left of the goalposts standing like twin beacons in the gloom. Harvard kicker Gary Bosnic had missed a 30-yd. field goal with 1:14 left in the game and now Brown was assured of a 31-30 victory in a struggle that eddied back and forth between two evenly matched teams...