--- title: Heart Disease and Christmas: Why Deaths Jump During the Holidays description: Heart experts have documented a so-called Christmas holiday effect of higher deaths around the end-of-the-year holidays, and now they have evidence that it’s not just due to the cold weather and the flu canonical: https://time.com/4610633/why-more-people-die-of-heart-disease-around-christmas/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-22T21:00:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:04:20.514Z article:section: Health og:title: Why Heart Attacks Spike at Christmas og:description: The so-called Christmas holiday effect is real og:url: https://time.com/4610633/why-more-people-die-of-heart-disease-around-christmas/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta8f0e9e20d90c566/6988b3b8fb4eac12918903fc/gettyimages-532179257.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5200 og:image:height: 2925 og:image:alt: Close up of hands taking turkey and cutting food. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Why Heart Attacks Spike at Christmas twitter:description: The so-called Christmas holiday effect is real twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta8f0e9e20d90c566/6988b3b8fb4eac12918903fc/gettyimages-532179257.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Why Heart Attacks Spike at Christmas > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Should I Drink Red Wine? [Watch (HLS stream): Should I Drink Red Wine?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/JLVLyuEq.m3u8) (1:35)  _Published 2015-03-12. Cheers to your health! All five of our experts give red wine a purple-stained smile._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Dec 22, 2016 9:00 PM UTC  Betsie Van Der Meer—Getty Images  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Dec 22, 2016 9:00 PM UTC For more than a decade, researchers have documented the fact that more people tend to die of heart-related disease around the Christmas and New Year’s holiday than at any other time of the year. But because the festive season coincides with the coldest months of the year, when people are more likely to develop cold- and flu-related health problems, it’s been hard for researchers to tease apart what’s actually behind it. So researchers led by Josh Knight at the University of Melbourne decided to eliminate the weather variable. He and his team looked at 25 years of mortality data from New Zealand, where Christmas and New Year’s occurs during the summer season, to figure out what effect the holidays have on death rates from heart disease. They found that even when Christmas occurs during warmer weather, deaths around the holiday season increased by around 4% compared to the average for the rest of year. The average age of people dying around this time is also slightly younger than that for the remainder of the year. That suggests that the holidays themselves might be contributing to increased mortality, independent of the effects of weather and health problems associated with colder temperatures. While this study didn’t ferret out the factors responsible, other studies have hinted at some possible culprits. The holidays are a stressful time for many, since family, social and financial obligations multiply, which can contribute to higher blood pressure and aggravation of heart disease risk factors. Richer foods that typically appear during the holidays, from sweets to meats, as well as the numerous opportunities to partake, may also play a role. Alcohol consumption also increases during the festive holiday season, which can contribute to health problems for some people. There could also be some less obvious reasons for the spike in holiday heart deaths. Knight notes that many people travel more during this season, putting them in unfamiliar places where they might not seek medical care as quickly as they might if they are at home. And for people who are already ill, there may be what experts call a displacement of death — people who try to postpone death until this time in an effort to experience one more holiday season with family and friends. Knight and his team stress that the findings are only a jumping off point for further research on what is actually causing the spike in deaths around Christmas; but at least the results hint that weather and cold temperatures might not be to blame. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] Should you drink red wine? It's your lucky day. All five of our experts give red wine a purple stained smile. A standard pour has 125 calories, so it's lighter than beer and mixed drinks, says Julia Zunpano. And of course it's packed with antioxidants. Alcohol is actually good for you if you drink it moderately. Drinking alcohol is associated with a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality compared to drinking too much or drinking not at all says Luigi Ferrucci. Ferrucci. Red wine might be particularly beneficial, but some recent studies suggest that we shouldn't give the famous compound resveratrol all the credit. There's likely not enough of it to make a difference, says resveratrol researcher Juan Carlos Espin. But we do know is that David Katz. Is that drinking habitually but moderately is part of the Mediterranean diet and linked to a long life. Just ask cardiologist James O'Keefe who loves red wine for its ability to lower the risk of coronary artery disease, diabetes, congestive heart failure and stroke. His grandmother Dorothy lived to be be 103, and she enjoyed the happy hour drink every night. The key to a long healthy life, Dorothy O'Keefe used to say, is to not drink too much. 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