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Death proves oblivious to Christmas

I take my title from a Nature article reporting that, contrary to various folk tales you might hear from time to time, people cannot in general postpone their deaths until important events have passed1. In fact, "more people die abruptly of a heart attack on Christmas than on any other day"2.

  1. Donn C. Young and Erinn M. Hade, "Holidays, Birthdays, and Postponement of Cancer Death", in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 292, No. 24, December 22/29, 2004, pp. 3012-3016. ↩

  2. David P. Phillips; Jason R. Jarvinen; Ian S. Abramson; Rosalie R. Phillips, "Cardiac Mortality Is Higher Around Christmas and New Year's Than at Any Other Time: The Holidays as a Risk Factor for Death", in Circulation, Vol. 110, pp. 3781-3788. [URL] ↩