Last December, we saw exactly what happens when almost 18 million people are told they can’t go home for the holidays. 

After that kind of last-minute disappointment, it’s no surprise that people are already counting down the days until they can put the out-of-office on and retreat back into the nest.

But why does the idea of going home have such a powerful draw, particularly at Christmas? 

Much of it comes down to whether you make a distinction between ‘home’ (where you live day-to-day) and ‘home home’ (the place you really consider home). 

More than two-thirds of Brits (67%) say they’ve had a ‘home home’, according to new research by home security company Ring, with the term associated with feelings of comfort, relaxation, safety, happiness and nostalgia.

More than a third of those surveyed (35%) saw the town they grew up in as their ‘home home’; 29% used the phrase to describe their childhood home and a quarter attributed it to where their parents live now. It’s safe to say that when we travel at Christmas, we’re often heading ‘home home’.

Meanwhile, 44% of people aged 18-34 surveyed by Ring see ‘home home’ as the place where their loved ones live - perhaps the most simple explanation for those positive emotions that rise to the surface as soon as you reach the front door. 

“If you go below the surface, humans aren’t very complex – we have a handful of basic needs that must be met, including a sense of security and the sense we’re being cared for,” says psychologist Simon Moore. “We’re also social creatures, and we tend to feel most comfortable when we’re surrounded by people we trust. That’s what we get from the places we consider ‘home home’.”

That sense of comfort many of us associate with ‘home home’ is also provided by sensory stimuli. From the familiar chime of your parents’ doorbell to the aroma of your Uncle Steve’s secret-recipe gravy and the glimmer of the baubles you remember hanging on the tree as a toddler, going home for the festive season is often a reassuringly familiar feast for the senses.

“The brain devotes about 80% of its attention to things like vision and smell,” explains Moore. He points to research that shows that sensory aspects of our early environments can shape our long-term memory. “We’re constantly picking up on visual and olfactory cues, and sights and smells that remind us of our childhoods are powerful triggers for familiar emotions and memories.”

A psychological concept called rosy retrospection bias may also be at play when we reflect on happy childhood memories, making us yearn to return to the place we grew up (and possibly remember our dad’s roasties as better than they really are). “We overemphasise the positive things we remember from our childhoods, and pay less attention to the aspects of ‘home home’ that we may have found difficult or frustrating,” says Moore.

Overall, a sense of soothing predictability is at the heart of what makes something feel like ‘home home’. Going home for the festive season may be comforting precisely because it’s so repetitive, loaded with traditions, rituals and moments that are unique to each family, but rarely change from year to year. From the moment the Ring doorbell alerts you to the arrival of the neighbours for the annual drinks party, to the heated inter-family debate about the monarchy that always kicks off after the Queen’s Speech, the Christmas period tends to tick along to a deeply familiar rhythm.

“Human beings are constantly thinking about how we can manage the future,” says Moore. “If we don’t know what’s about to happen, we have to be alert and watchful – and that can be exhausting. We find routine comforting and relaxing because we can switch off when we feel as though we can predict what’s going to happen next.” 

This desire for predictability is likely more acute than ever after living through a pandemic.

 “One of the reasons the pandemic has been so hard is because we all crave a sense of control over our own lives,” explains Moore. 

No surprise then that the research showed the most familiar and predictable sensations were the biggest contributors to people’s idea of home. 65% of respondents named the feeling of sleeping in their own bed as the thing that made them feel at home, with 45% citing smell of a home-cooked meal and 37% opting for the taste of a cup of tea.

Ultimately, says Moore, we go ‘home home’ – wherever that might be for us – in search of comfort. And comfort is more psychologically important than we might assume. 

“We pay a lot of attention to ‘big emotions’ such as excitement, and we don’t tend to think of security and contentment as ‘big’,” he says. “But being around people who you like and care about – and who like and care about you – is so influential. It shapes our memories, and it shapes who we are.”

Small wonder then, that we’re so excited to return to the nest. This year more than most, we could all do with a little extra comfort.  

Want to find out more about the pull of home? You can read the full findings of Ring’s research on the subject here. Plus, if you want to make sure you don’t miss any Christmas visitors while you’re out of the house, investing in a Ring doorbell will ensure you stay connected to home, wherever you are. Shop the range here.