Vacations are a chance to take break from work, see the world and enjoy time with family. But do they make you happier? Researchers from the Netherlands set out to measure the effect that vacations have on overall happiness and how long it lasts. They studied happiness levels among 1, 530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom took a vacation during the 32-week study period. The study showed that the largest lift in happiness comes from the simple act of planning vacation. In the study, the effect of vacation expectation lifted happiness for eight weeks.

After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people. How much stress or relaxation a traveler experienced on the trip appeared to influence post-vacation happiness. There was no post-trip happiness benefit for travelers who said the vacation was “neutral” or “stressful.”

Surprisingly, even those travelers who described the trip as “relaxing” showed no additional jump in happiness after the trip. “They were no happier than people who had not been on holiday,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn, tourism research lecturer at Breda University. The only vacationers who experienced an increase in happiness after the trip were those who reported feeling “very relaxed” on their vacation. Among those people, the vacation happiness effect lasted for just two weeks after the trip before returning to baseline levels.

One reason vacations don’t increase happiness after the trip may have to do with the stress of returning to work. And for some travelers, the holiday itself was stressful. “In comments from people, the thing they mentioned most referred to disagreements with a travel partner or being ill,” Mr. Nawijn said.

Since most of the happiness boost comes from planning and expecting a vacation, the study suggests that people may get more out of several small trips a year than one big vacation, Mr Nawijn said.

How Do We Celebrate Mother’s Day

It is specially in a big family like ours that such an idea takes hold—we decided to have a special celebration of Mother’s Day. We thought it a fine idea. It made us all realize how much Mother had done for us for years and all the efforts and sacrifice that she had made for our sake.

We decided that we’d make it a great day, a holiday for all the family, and do everything we could to make Mother happy. It was our plan to make it a day just like Christmas, so we decided to decorate the house with flowers and ribbons. We got Mother to arrange the decoration, because she always does it at Christmas.

Well, after breakfast we had it arranged as a surprise for Mother that we would hire a car and take her for a beautiful drive away into the country, which would be a great enjoyment for her. We got everything arranged for the trip, and we got Mother to cut up some sandwiches and make up a sort of lunch in case we got hungry. Mother packed it all up in a basket for us ready to go into the car.

Well, when the car came to the door, it turned out that there hardly seemed as much room in it as we had supposed, because we hadn’t considered Father’s fishing basket and the rods, and it was apparent that we couldn’t all get in. Father that he could just wait at home. But of course we all felt that it would never do it, especially as we knew he would make trouble. The two girls, Anne and Mary, would gladly have stayed and helped Mother get dinner, only it seemed such a pity to, on a lovely day like this, have their new hats home to miss the beautiful day. Will and I would have dropped out, but unfortunately we wouldn’t have been any use in getting the dinner.

So in the end it was decided that Mother would stay home and just have a lovely day round the house, and get the dinner. We all drove away with three cheers for Mother, and Mother stood and watched us from the window for as long as she could see us. Father caught such big fish that he felt sure that Mother couldn’t have landed them anyway, if she had been fishing for them, and Will and I fished too, though we didn’t get so many as Father. We all had a splendid time.

It was quite late when we got back, and Mother had dinner just nicely ready for us.

Mother said it was the most wonderful day in her life, with tears shining in her eyes.