Ghosts of Christmas Past

In my younger days articles in newspapers and magazines regularly appeared in December remarking about the high rate of murders and suicides between Christmas and New Year’s Day. In the past 20 years they have been replaced by articles debunking any such increase. Two decades of debunking might seem adequate, but the articles still appear. The debunkers are correct. April and May, not December and January, have the highest rates of deadly violence to oneself and others. December is relatively slow. Yet, this, too is misleading. The older writers were not simply making stuff up. They were reporting anecdotal evidence from EMTs, police, and hospital workers who insisted they were exceptionally busy during Christmas season. They really were and they are. Their mistake was assuming that the extra busyness must be due to violence. It was and is not. Natural deaths spike substantially this time of year. This is not a myth, and they are what keep emergency responders busy. Study after study confirms that the holiday season is deadly. Philips, Barker, and Brewer in their study “Christmas and New Year as Risk Factors for Death” published by the NCBI state, “In the two weeks starting with Christmas, there is an excess of 42,325 deaths [in the U.S.] from natural causes above and beyond the normal winter increase. Christmas and New Year appear to be risk factors for deaths from many diseases.”

As yet, no exogenous cause for the increase has been found, so the answer may lie in the individuals themselves. It is well known that people with serious health conditions have a way of surviving to landmark dates. They are more likely to die on or shortly after a birthday, for example, than in the several days prior to it. So, too, with other notable (to them) dates. They want to survive until then and they do. Afterwards they don’t care so much, so they don’t. To be sure, we cannot “think” ourselves well, but we do seem able to hold out a while longer if we choose – not a lot longer, but often long enough. The end of the year, whether we mark it in our minds by Christmas or by the actual New Year, is such a landmark.

A little pleasant nostalgia: 1962, I think

The question remains why we don't retain enough enthusiasm to last until the next landmark. The holiday blues are an obvious suspect. For all the “‘tis the season to be jolly” exhortations, many adults have bouts of nostalgia-inspired sadness this time of year. Nostalgia can be sweet, but beyond a certain age it can’t be separated from loss. For that reason, for example, after my sister passed my mom hated the Elvis Presley song Blue Christmas and changed the station when it played on the radio. Among the losses is our own youth. Inevitably this reminds us of our own mortality. (I never thought the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in  A Christmas Carol made a very convincing point, by the way; the same fate awaits penny-pinchers and generous souls alike; the “unmourned” aspect isn’t likely to bother one much under the circumstances, though I suppose in the context of the story there is the risk of carrying chains like Marley.) To top it all, some of us never recover from the news about Santa.

I don't normally experience holiday blues, though this is something for which I take no credit: there are other times and events that put me in a funk but leave other folks unfazed. We all have our buttons. For those who do suffer the blues this time of year, I’ll just offer the reminder that the season ends soon enough. In the meantime nostalgia needn't be depressing. I even rather like Blue Christmas. 

Elvis – Blue Christmas