Gloomy — but Interesting — Statistics about Holiday-Season Deaths

Over the holidays in December, I spent time with family in a hospital,  responding to an emergency health situation.  One of the staff told me it is “always” busier at the holidays, and she attributed this to family members gathering together and “realizing” that a loved one’s health was declining.  However, there may be more to it than that.  Former New York Administrative Law Judge Karen Miller shared a very interesting Wall Street Journal article reporting on the trends in deaths at the holidays.  While some of the information is, perhaps, expected, as you think about stress and weather contributing to health risks, the spike in deaths in early 2015 was unusual, when “nearly a third more senior citizens died than normal in the first two weeks of the new year.”  For more data, read “Why Death Doesn’t Take a Holiday This Time of Year.”

Thankfully, in our family we weren’t dealing with a death! Thanks for sharing this article, Karen.