How Do YOU celebrate?

September 18, 2018

One needs only to know a little about human gestation to proffer a guess as to why the most popular dates for babies to be born are in mid-September.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) the most common day for births in 2017 is September 9^th. The previous most popular day, from 1973 to 1999 according to a Harvard study, was September 16^th.

In fact, in the 2017 numbers, we discover the most common days to be:

1. September 9
2. September 19
3. September 12
4. September 17
5. September 10
6. July 7
7. September 20
8. September 15
9. September 16
10. September 18

The Infallible Wikipedia offers the following explanation:

“According to a public database of births, birthdays in the United States are quite evenly distributed for the most part, but there tend to be more births in September and October. This may be because there is a holiday season nine months before (the human gestation period is about nine months), or because the longest nights of the year also occur in the Northern Hemisphere nine months before. However, it appears the holidays have more of an effect on birth rates than the winter: New Zealand, a Southern Hemisphere country, has the same September and October peak with no corresponding peak in March and April. The least common birthdays tend to fall around public holidays, such as Christmas, New Years Day and fixed-date holidays such as July 4 in the US. This is probably due to hospitals and birthing centres not offering labor inductions and elective Cesarean sections on public holidays.

Based on Harvard University research of birth records in the United States between 1973 and 1999, September 16 is the most common birthday in the United States and December 25 the least common birthday (other than February 29, because of leap years). In 2011, October 5 and 6 were reported as the most frequently occurring birthdays.”

It is duly noted that the approximate conception dates for 9 of those 10 dates is between December 17^th and December 28^th… apparently a lot of people commemorate Christmas and New Years with their own personal celebrations.

Chances are good that you know someone who has a birthday this week. In the past week alone I’ve had Facebook inform me of at least 4 ‘friends’ on every single day with birthdays.

Last year I noted this trend on Facebook and my niece, whose birthday is September 30^th, commented that she was teasing one of her friends about being born on the 16^th because of ‘when’ she was likely to have been conceived. And then the light went on for my niece… who was a week late… Can you say Happy New Year?!

And, finally, is another friend of mine whose birthday is September 18^th. For years, he told me, they would rib their Dad about the link between that date and Christmas. Dad finally had enough and blew up one day, exclaiming, “Okay! It was Christmas Eve! Now drop it.”

In the world of irony it’s even more delicious that my friend’s daughter was born… on September 18^th. Merry Christmas, everyone.

A couple of links to amuse you:

http://thedailyviz.com/2016/09/17/how-common-is-your-birthday-dailyviz/ (a cool interactive map where you can see how popular your birthday is and where it ranks. Mine is the 37^th most popular date)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday (because it’s the Infallible Wikipedia, right?)