In a study published in 1999, a research group found that there seemed to be consistently more deaths from ischemic heart disease during the winter than there were during the summer.
About one third more deaths from heart disease were recorded in December and January than from June through September.
They we were struck by an increase in deaths starting around Thanksgiving, climbing through Christmas, peaking on New Year’s Day, and then falling again. They reckoned that this peak in cardiac deaths during the holidays might result from factors including the emotional stress of the holidays, overindulgence during the holiday season, or both.
They call it the...
“Merry Christmas Coronary” and “Happy New Year Heart Attack” Phenomenon *
Christmas time, or the Holiday season, may be hard and stressful for many reasons: the strain it often causes on your personal finances, loneliness, unfulfilled expectations, the seasonal darkness, over-eating and drinking, and so on.
This festive season several famous individuals have passed away - Pelé, Vivienne Westwood, Pope Benedict XVI, Barbara Walters, Anita Pointer (of Pointer Sisters)...
Did the Christmas related stress have a bearing on them passing? We can only speculate.
It is often also asserted that, due factors like loneliness, more suicides around Christmas time than any other time of the year. Is this true? I myself certainly used to believe it, but...
"Suicides and parasuicides increase at Christmas" - a myth! It seems...
It is often claimed that "people already suffering from depression are pushed over the edge by the surrounding jollity that they can’t share in, by heightened feelings of loneliness (because “everyone but they” has family and friends to spend the holiday with), and by seasonal affective disorder due to the long nights and short days of mid-to-late December."
But the Christmas suicide peak is only a myth, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. According to CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, suicides (at more than 40,000 per year in the US) are at a nadir in December, and peak in the spring and fall.
Whichever way you look at it though, the Holiday Season is a stressful one. More and more people that I talk to are opting, either not to celebrate Christmas at all, or only do so in a a very modest way.
Some off course don't celebrate Christmas at all, like most Muslims, Hindus (at least not officially), Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, and others.
It seems that they in many ways benefit from not celebrating Christmas, at least financially.
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