Every winter, deaths from heart-related conditions rise in the United States. Plotted on a graph, the rise in deaths looks like a hill — with two spikes at the top when deaths sharply increase.
“Sticking up out of this hill, are two — you might say — television towers. One television tower at Christmas and one television tower at New Year's,” said David Phillips, a sociologist at the University of California, San Diego, who first pointed out the phenomenon now nicknamed the “Merry Christmas Coronary,” the “Happy New Year Heart Attack,” or the more reserved “Christmas Holiday Effect.”
Now, a group of researchers has further ruled out any notion that the bump in holiday deaths could be accounted for by the overall wintertime effect. In a study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers examined data from New Zealand, where the holidays fall in the middle of summer. They found that the number of cardiac-related deaths outside of hospitals rose 4 percent over the Christmas holiday — resulting in about four additional deaths per year in the small country.
