The Undying Holiday-Suicide Myth
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu
Reason being: People without family go to bars to distract from not having anyone. People with family are stressed out from the inevitable family drama that comes from getting everyone together, so they go out to the bars afterwards.
I can see it. No idea if it is true (quick search doesn't yield much). If true, it probably correlates with a bump in suicides as well.
I grew up in a split-faith household, with the more zealous side not celebrating common religious holidays, so I skipped on quite a lot of Christmas drama, though still got my fair share of it on other occasions, and of course I witness other people suffering through it. One Christmas Eve, an acquaintance asked me out of the blue if he can crash at my place for the night. Turns out, he wanted to skip the "Christmas spirit" experience and learned from our common friend that my apartment is a Christmas-free sanctuary.
My wife came from a Catholic family. We have small children now, and still struggle with deciding whether or not we'll be doing the whole Christmas thing. On the one hand, we don't want to deprive our children of the tradition almost everyone else in the country shares. On the other hand, my wife enjoyed the full course of almost two decades of family holidays, and even more than me wants to spare our children the "Christmas atmosphere".
To say this is fortunate is an understatement.
My immediate family gets along great. I think mainly because my siblings and I got our really mean disagreements out of the way as teens.
Now everyone just snipes at each other. Sometimes in ways that seem mean spirited to an outsider (my wife still sometimes will gape at the way we snipe at each other - in her family this would lead to years worth of not speaking and grudges), but we all know the topics to stay away from. You know - the really hurtful stuff. The sniping targets the small funny/embarrassing stuff, a snarky act of love for each other.
> It's the closest family that actually is the problem.
In our case, it's the extended family. The increasingly racist and unhinged know-it-all uncle. The aunt who is both a pathological liar, attention seeker, and also furious at the world. The passive aggressive aunt who was married to a pastor, who can't stop telling people how they should be living their lives.
10 minutes with any of them, and I'm ready to go to the bar.
Yes, it's about family, and yes, I'd say you're very fortunate. I don't know how common "a family where everyone gets along" is, but in my personal experience, it's quite rare.
> Maybe you could downsize? Have Christmas with only the closest family.
It's the closest family that actually is the problem. My understanding of the phenomenon is that people organizing the event typically succumb to perceived (I'd say imagined) social pressure demanding it to be perfect, which immediately sparks conflicts - by the time of Christmas Eve dinner, everyone is wound up, if they haven't already snapped multiple times before. The dinner then obviously becomes a disappointment - instead of familial love, you get familial contempt. Attempts to counteract it become a case of "beatings will continue until morale improves".
And, of course, the more this happens, the more likely it'll happen again next year, as everyone expects to have a nervous and unpleasant day, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
That was more than 20 years ago of course!
it never occurred to me that it was literally about holiday suicides
the group's one-line description does seem relevant
i guess strn and trn didn't show those descriptions? or i would have known
i wonder how many people from that subculture are still alive today
I wonder the same. There used to be a sentiment expressed back then with the phrase "waiting for the bus". I wonder how many of those folks are gone or are still waiting for the bus. This thought makes me want to cry.
I remember a chart that was floating around that usenet group that showed you the ideal rope length for hanging yourself without either choking or popping off your head from too short/long. I think they sourced their info from this chart: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Table_of_Drops
Good times.
Silver lining: COVID lockdown didn't seem to lead to a rash of suicides like some predicted it would, so I guess that's nice?
My personal headcanon simplification of this very complex relationship is that humanity is sort of like an ideal gas such that when you pump energy into it, chaotic patterns of increased activity occur.
Because nobody wants to steal copper from a construction site in Chicago in February and that drags the average down in the winter.
Time of day, however, has a larger correlation (early hours of the morning).