Some studies have found that people can delay their deaths until after a holiday—for example, in one study, men with Jewish last names were more likely to die in the week after Passover than the week before. Researchers looked for this pattern in a large statewide data set.

What the researchers wanted to know: Do cancer deaths dip before Christmas, Thanksgiving, or the individual's birthday?

What they did: The researchers used data on all cancer deaths in Ohio between 1989 and 2000. (The state health department collects that information for the National Center for Health Statistics.) They added up the deaths in the seven days before and the seven days after each event to see if there was a dip in the first week and a peak in the second. They chose cancer because it seems more plausible that people dying slowly of a chronic disease would be able to put off dying.

What they found: They found no general pattern suggesting people could consistently postpone their deaths. The only significant pattern they found was that black people were more likely to die in the week before Thanksgiving than the week after. (As if they wanted to hurry up and die before Thanksgiving came.) People were a little more likely to die on their birthday than on other days in that two-week period.

What the study means to you: Some people may be able to put off dying, but it doesn't look like people are consistently able to put off death until after a significant date, and certainly not at the rates that have been suggested by earlier studies.

Caveats: The authors say the finding that people are more likely to die on their birthdays could easily be coincidence, because the study did so many different statistical tests. Also, the three days they chose—Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the individual's birthday—may not be the most significant ones; maybe more people hang on for a grandchild's graduation or other religious holidays. But graduation dates aren't recorded on death certificates, and the researchers had to work with the holidays they could get.

Find out more: End-of-life care for cancer patients from the National Cancer Institute

Read the article: Young, D.C. and E.M. Hade. "Holidays, Birthdays, and Postponement of Cancer Death." Journal of the American Medical Association. Dec. 22/29, 2004, Vol. 292, No. 24, pp. 3012-3016.

Abstract online: http://jama.ama-assn.org