Why are so few people born on Christmas Day, New Year’s and other holidays?

Holiday birthdays are lonely.
Bryan Keogh/The Conversation via Shutterstock.com

Jay L. Zagorsky, Boston University

Christmas and New Year’s are days of celebration in many parts of the world when people gather with family and friends. One thing many typically don’t celebrate on those days is a birthday.

That’s because Dec. 25 is the least popular day in the U.S., 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.

So why do people have fewer babies on holidays like Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year’s – the second-least popular birthday in the U.S.?

I am personally interested in the question because my wife was a New Year’s Day baby. And as an economist, I find these data puzzles fascinating.

Least and most popular birthdays

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% and 40% fewer babies are born on Dec. 25 than on the peak day of the year.

One reason why these days have so few births is almost no cesarean births are scheduled by doctors to happen on public holidays or weekends. About one in three American babies are born this way.

And even in the case of vaginal births, doctors can induce labor, which helps control when babies are born. Inductions also typically don’t happen when doctors want to be out of the office celebrating the holidays with family and friends.

One reason why births on Christmas and New Year’s plummet is that for many people time management and scheduling is paramount.

Interestingly, in England, Wales and New Zealand, relatively few babies are born on April 1. While that date is not a national holiday, mothers might avoid giving birth on April Fools’ Day for fear of their children being taunted or bullied.

As for the most popular birthdays, they tend to happen in the fall. In fact, the top 10 days to have a baby in the U.S. are all in September, while in England, Wales, Ireland and New Zealand they’re in that month or October.

Fall birthdays make sense since many babies are conceived during the colder winter months. Conception is tied to shorter days and lower outside temperatures.

Unrecorded births

Unfortunately, similar data for non-English-speaking countries are not widely available.

Research into when people were born is relatively new because for centuries no one needed or completed a birth certificate. In the U.S., birth certificates have been widely used only since the end of World War II.

While some countries require all births to be registered, one out of every four children born in the world today does not officially exist, since there is no record of his or her birth.

The United Nations has some world data, which show popular birth months tend to shift by latitude. Countries at high latitudes, like Norway or Russia, have peak birth days in July or August. Countries closer to the equator, like El Salvador, have peak birth days later in the year, like October.

As for my wife, she was born a few hours after her parents welcomed in another year. Her birth was a surprise to all the guests they invited over to celebrate the New Year. We joke that being born then is the best day, because there is always a party with fireworks for her birthday. It is also a great day because there are never any competing birthday parties.

So if you are born on a holiday like Christmas, New Year’s or even April Fools’ Day, take some comfort in knowing the relative rarity of your birth makes you even more special than you already are.

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Jay L. Zagorsky, Senior Lecturer, Questrom School of Business, Boston University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

India Finally Allows EU to Visit Orissa – But No Fact-Finding

After months of asking, delegation wins clearance to enter Kandhamal district.

NEW DELHI, January 29 (CDN) — Weary of international scrutiny of troubled Kandhamal district in Orissa state, officials yesterday finally allowed delegates from the European Union (EU) to visit affected areas – as long as they do no fact-finding.

A team of 13 diplomats from the EU was to begin its four-day tour of Kandhamal district yesterday, but the federal government had refused to give the required clearance to visit the area, which was wracked by anti-Christian violence in 2008. A facilitator of the delegation said that authorities then reversed themselves and yesterday gave approval to the team.

The team plans to visit Kandhamal early next month to assess the state government’s efforts in rehabilitating victims and prosecuting attackers in the district, where a spate of anti-Christian violence in August-September 2008 killed over 100 people and burned 4,640 houses, 252 churches and 13 educational institutions.

When the federal government recommended that Orissa state officials allow the delegation to visit the area, the state government agreed under the condition that the diplomats undertake no fact-finding, according to the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency. The government stipulated to the EU team, led by the deputy chief of mission of the Spanish embassy, Ramon Moreno, that they are only to interact with local residents. The delegation consented.

Delegates from the EU had also sought a visit to Kandhamal in November 2009, but the government denied permission. The diplomats from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Finland were able to make it only to the Orissa state capital, Bhubaneswar, at that time.

Ironically, three days before the government initially denied permission to the EU team, the head of the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Mohan Bhagwat, visited Orissa and addressed a huge rally of its cadres in Bhubaneswar, reported PTI on Tuesday (Jan. 26).

While Bhagwat was not reported to have made an inflammatory speech, many Christians frowned on his visit. It is believed that his organization was behind the violence in Kandhamal, which began after a leader of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council or VHP), Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, was killed by Maoists (extreme Marxists) on Aug. 23, 2008. Hindu extremist groups wrongly blamed it on local Christians in order to stir up anti-Christian violence.

On Nov. 11, Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told the state assembly House that 85 people from the RSS, 321 members of the VHP and 118 workers of the Bajrang Dal, youth wing of the VHP, were rounded up by the police for the attacks in Kandhamal.

EU’s Indictments

It is believed that New Delhi was hesitant to allow EU’s teams into Kandhamal because it has indicted India on several occasions for human rights violations. Soon after violence broke out in Kandhamal, the European Commission, EU’s executive wing, called it a “massacre of minorities.”

Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who was attending the ninth India-EU summit in France at the time of the violence, called the anti-Christian attacks a “national shame.” French President Nicolas Sarkozy, head of the European Council, and Jose Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, took up the issue “strongly with Singh,” reported The Times of India on Sept. 30, 2008.

On Aug. 17, 2009, the EU asked its citizens not to visit Kandhamal in an advisory stating that religious tensions were not yet over. “We therefore advise against travel within the state and in rural areas, particularly in the districts of Kandhamal and Bargarh,” it stated.

The EU’s advisory came at a time when the state government was targeting the visit of 200,000 foreign tourists to Orissa, noted PTI.

Kandhamal Superintendent of Police Praveen Kumar suggested that the advisory was not based on truth.

“There is no violence in Kandhamal since October 2008,” he told PTI. “The people celebrated Christmas and New Year’s Day as peace returned to the tribal dominated district.”

Before denying permission to the EU, the Indian government had restricted members of a U.S. panel from coming to the country. In June 2009, the government refused to issue visas for members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) to visit Orissa. The panel then put India on its “Watch List” for the country’s violations of religious freedom.

Tensions Remain

Local human rights activist Ajay Singh said that while the state government had made some efforts to rehabilitate the victims, a lot more needed to be done.

An estimated 300 families are still living in private relief camps in Kandhamal, and at least 1,200 families have left Kandhamal following the violence, he said. These families have not gone back to their villages, fearing that if they returned without converting to Hinduism they would be attacked, he added.

Singh also said that authorities have asked more than 100 survivors of communal violence living in an abandoned market complex known as NAC, in G. Udayagiri area of Kandhamal, to move out. He said it is possible they were asked to leave because of the intended visit of the EU team.

Of the more than 50,000 people displaced by the violence, around 1,100 have received some compensation either from the government or from Christian and other organizations, he added.

Additionally, the state administration has to do much more in bringing the attackers to justice, said a representative of the Christian Legal Association. Of the total 831 police cases registered, charges have been filed in around 300 cases; 133 of these have been dropped due to “lack of evidence,” said the source.

Report from Compass Direct News 

Islamic Militants in Somalia Murder Christian Leader

Al Shabaab extremists threaten widow of slain pastor of underground church.

NAIROBI, Kenya, January 26 (CDN) — Islamic extremists shot the leader of an underground church to death outside the capital city of Somalia this month and have threatened to kill his wife, his tearful widow told Compass.

Having learned that he had left Islam to become a Christian, Somali militants from the Islamic extremist al Shabaab murdered 41-year-old Mohammed Ahmed Ali at about noon on Jan. 1, Amina Ibrahim Hassan said.

He was killed sometime after leaving his home in Hodan, on the outskirts of Mogadishu, she said. She and other family members were not immediately aware that he had been killed.

“We waited for him that day, but he did not turn up,” said Hassan, who has since fled to Nairobi. “The following day, on Jan. 2, I was informed by the fellowship that my husband had been killed.”

Ali led an underground church. Christian sources said members of al Shabaab, said to have links with al Qaeda terrorists, had been monitoring Ali and his wife for indications that they had left Islam.

Ali had organized New Year’s Day festivities for Christians to take place in Medina, about 15 kilometers (nine miles) outside of Mogadishu. Al Shabaab extremists killed him after word of the planned party leaked to them, Hassan said.

Hassan, who worked for a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) before leaving the country, said she received threatening calls from members of al Shabaab on Jan. 3.

“We know who you are working for,” Hassan said one extremist told her. “We also know your home and that you are a follower of the Christians, and we are going to kill you the way we killed your husband.”

Aware of the Islamic extremist militia’s determination to carry out their threats, Hassan called a relative in Nairobi and informed him of the death of her husband and her intention to flee to Nairobi. 

She set out for Kenya early the next morning by bus with her only child, 2-year-old son Abdi Asis Mohammed Ahmed. They reached Ifo, one of the Dadaab refugee camps on the Kenya side of the border, on Jan. 11. She stayed there for a few days before continuing on, arriving at Nairobi on Jan. 20.

“I am thankful that I was able to reach Kenya safely having lost everything – my husband and property,” Hassan said.

Al Shabaab extremists have been monitoring Somalis who work with NGOs for signs that they have embraced Christianity, Christian sources said. 

Ali came to faith in Christ under the influence of his late uncle, Ali Mohammed Nur, who died in 2000 at the age of 70. Ali, who had worked as a taxi driver, completed secondary education and converted to Christianity the same year his uncle died in 2000. He was baptized in 2005.

Hassan said she converted to Christianity in 2005, was baptized in 2006 and married Ali in 2007. She worked for various NGOs in Somalia before fleeing the war-torn country.

In 2009 Islamic militants in Somalia sought out at least 15 Christians, including women and children, and killed them for their faith in a campaign to rid the country of all non-Muslims. On Nov. 14, Islamic extremists controlling part of Mogadishu executed a 23-year-old Christian they accused of trying to convert a 15-year-old Muslim to Christianity, according to Christian sources. Members of al Shabaab had taken Mumin Abdikarim Yusuf into custody on Oct. 28 after the 15-year-old boy reported him to the militants.

Before Yusuf was executed by two gunshots to the head, reports filtered in that he had been badly beaten and his fingers broken as the Islamists tried to extract incriminating evidence against him and information about other Christians. A source later learned that Yusuf’s body showed signs of torture; his front teeth were gone, and some of his fingers were broken, the source said.

On Oct. 19 in Galkayo, in Somalia’s autonomous Puntland region, three masked members of another militant Islamist group in Somalia killed a Somali woman who declined to wear a veil as prescribed by Muslim custom. Sources said members of the comparatively “moderate” Suna Waljameca group killed Amina Muse Ali, 45, in her home; she had said members of the group had long monitored her movements because they suspected she was a Christian.

Suna Waljameca is considered “moderate” in comparison with al Shabaab, which it has fought for control over areas of Somalia; it is one of several Islamic groups in the country championing adoption of a strict interpretation of sharia (Islamic law). Along with al Shabaab, another group vying for power is the Hisbul Islam political party.

Somali Christians are in danger from both extremist groups and Somali law. While proclaiming himself a moderate, President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed has embraced a version of sharia that mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam.

On Sept. 28, a leader of Islamic extremist al Shabaab militia in Lower Juba identified only as Sheikh Arbow shot to death 46-year-old Mariam Muhina Hussein in Marerey village after discovering she had six Bibles, according to Christian sources. On Sept. 15, al Shabaab militants shot 69-year-old Omar Khalafe at a checkpoint they controlled 10 kilometers (six miles) from Merca after discovering that he was transporting Bibles, sources said.

On Aug. 18 al Shabaab extremists shot and killed 41-year-old Ahmed Matan in Bulahawa, near the Somali border with Kenya, according to Christian sources. In Mahadday Weyne, 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Mogadishu, al Shabaab Islamists on July 20 shot to death another convert from Islam, Mohammed Sheikh Abdiraman, sources said. On Feb. 21 al Shabaab militants beheaded two young boys in Somalia because their Christian father refused to divulge information about a church leader.

The extremists also reportedly beheaded seven Christians on July 10; Reuters reported that they were killed in Baidoa for being Christians and “spies.”

Report from Compass Direct News