I’m honestly not sure whether or not being born on Christmas would be a good thing or a bad thing; on the one hand, you’d always be off work and have family and friends available to celebrate, but on the other…you’d be sharing a lot and getting all of your gifts at once.
The good news is you’re not likely to have to decide, since you’re less likely to be born on Christmas than any other day of the year.
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First noted in a 1999 paper that explored a US tax system quirk, this is actually a statistical fact, explains economist Jay Zagorsky.
“Dec. 25 is the least popular day in the US, Australia, and New Zealand to give birth. In England, Wales, and Ireland, it’s the second-least popular, behind Dec. 26, when Brits celebrate Boxing Day.”
A list of how likely a birth was to fall on any given day of the year, compiled by researchers Stacy Dickert-Conlin and Amitabh Chandra, was published in the New York Times in 2006.
Researchers have long linked times of year and birth rates to a range of biological factors, as well as the natural ebb and flow of the world around us.
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“Hypotheses include deterioration of sperm quality during summer, seasonal differences in anterior pituitary-ovarian function caused by changes in the daylight length, and variation in quality of the ovum or endometrial receptivity.
Increased s*xual activity associated with end-of-year holiday festivities has also been postulated as a possible behavioral explanation for the December peak in conceptions, the exact reasons remain unknown.”
So basically there are a handful of things that could influence this fact, but we don’t know for sure why not many folks have a December 25th birthday.
Mostly, people like Zagorsky believe it’s down to the practical.
“All of the least-favored days in the U.S. are tied to holidays, whether it’s Christmas, New Year’s, Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving. Depending on the year and place, between 30 percent and 40 percent fewer babies are born on Dec. 25 than on the peak day of the year.”
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Basically, doctors don’t schedule c-sections or inductions on major holidays, since they’re likely to have other plans or be out of town. And in America, a good number of kiddos aren’t being born on their own timeline.
If your birthday is on Christmas, take heart – you’re far more special than everyone and their brother born in September.
