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Christmas Is Still The Deadliest Time Of The Year
The holiday season is the jolliest season of the year, a time when people are filled with good cheer, love, and enough MSG to put a small buffalo into a coma. Christmas will also absolutely fucking kill you. A BBC study found that deaths can increase by 10-15 percent during this time of the year. And death has its pick of how it's going to do it, too.
BBC
For example, having a giant ball drop on you.
What's behind Door #1? Heart disease! The mortality rate from heart disease and other natural (Dorito-induced) cardiac failures seems to increase between Christmas and about a week after New Year's Day. Some scientists thought it might be because of the cold weather relentlessly assaulting our immune systems, but it turns out a similar spike happens in New Zealand, which celebrates the holidays during the face-melting part of summer. Not only that, but the people who die from cardiac disease around Christmas tend to be nearly a year younger on average than people who die of heart disease at any other time. A somewhat positive theory is that many patients on their way out are hanging on long enough to enjoy one last holiday with their families, then they remember that January always sucks and kick the bucket.
KatarzynaBialasiewicz /iStock
"I never get anything nice for MLK day, anyway."
Door # 2: car crashes! Everyone knows that shopping around the holidays can be murder, but the real fatalities start happening on the way home. All that post-mall stress gets inadvertently taken out on other drivers. According to research done by State Farm, 32 percent of drivers have a tendency to become more aggressive during the holiday season, as their brains stew over long lines, high prices, and the hundredth time hearing "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer," and they stop focusing. The study also noted that parents and people under 49 are particularly susceptible to this, which we can't help but notice is the majority of human beings on Earth. Way to narrow it down, State Farm.
Raysonho/Wiki Commons
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