How You’re Most Likely to Die Around Christmas

​The holiday season can be a tough time. Bank accounts dip lower than thermometers, and blood boils from recapitulated family squabbles. Even though it may feel that way, singing those same carols again or ingesting your aunt's notorious Christmas pudding probably won't kill you. Here are a few things that might.

Watching the snow fall softly outside on Christmas day is one of those Rockw​ellian fantasies that is better in your head—when you have to start tangling with snow, things get hairy. One s​tudy found that over 85,000 traffic accidents per year are because of winter storm conditions, and over 1,200 of those accidents are fatal.

Snowy conditions also lead to shoveling, which leads to more cases of cardiac arrest. "The post-blizzard spike [in heart attacks] could be attributed to the fact that sedentary people with potential heart problems have no choice but to engage in heart-pounding work with a shovel, whereas other aerobic activities (at other times of year) can be put off or skipped altogether," reads an article from ​Slate. Another stu​dy found that shoveling results in 11,500 emergency room visits in the US each year, and about 1,600 fatal cardiac events.

Combine cities with cold temperatures, intermittently melting snow, and lots of maintenance people with a day off, and you get one thing: icicles, dangling forebodingly above the heads of innocent passers-by. Even though icicles make a great murder weapon in fictio​nal tales, you're not extremely likely to get struck by a falling icicle; some estima​tes suggest that 15 Americans die from icicles each year, although the government doesn't keep track. But in Russia this happens more often. Usually several dozen people die from icicles each year, but in 2010, 150​ people in St. Petersburg were killed or injured.

Eating is a thing you probably do fairly frequently. You may think you're a pro. But according to the Nationa​l Safety Council, choking is the eighth most common accidental cause of death in the US, resulting in about 2,800 ​deaths per year, many of them children. Drinking a lot—as one does around the holidays—can make you m​ore likely to choke, because you're ingesting more and not paying a ton of attention.

Also, there aren't many reports of this, but apparently it is possible to rupt​ure your stomach from eating too much. If you're feeling nauseous already, maybe it's better to skip that extra helping.

It's a simple fact: more people in the US die during the winter months—about 2,000 deaths per year between 2006 and 2010, according to the Cent​ers for Disease Control. There are lots of reasons for these deaths—cold temperatures cause blood to clot more, which causes strokes and heart attacks; people are inside more, so infectious diseases spread more easily.

But one reason is expo​sure to cold, which can sometimes lower the body's core temperature to dangerous levels. Interestingly, people in colder climes aren't usually the ones who fall victim to exposure; according to Bill Keatin​ge, a now-deceased doctor at Queen Mary University in London in an art​icle from the BBC: "People in the north of Finland take great precautions against cold. They keep their houses warmer in winter than we do [in the U.K.], and they are much better equipped for outdoor cold." People who aren't dressed properly can die from spending too much time outside, doing errands or waiting for the bus, or elderly people can even die from indoor temperatures that might not feel cold to a younger person.

Getting sick with the flu isn't pleasant, but we usually assume we'll bounce back in a few days. For some 36,000 Am​ericans every year, that's not the case. It's mostly seniors, children and people with chronic conditions who are at ​risk, and the peak of the season is in January and February. But maybe you should listen to your mother and get that flu shot this year, just to be safe.

Cold temperatures call for more indoor heating and fewer open windows. Little ventilation and leaky pipes can sometimes lead to a buildup of carbon monoxide in your home. Carbon mon​oxide is a gas that has no odor, color or taste, so it's very hard to detect, and prolonged exposure to the gas leads to 2,0​00 deaths in the US each year.

If you're starting to feel nervous, here's some good news. There are some things that are less likely to cause an untimely demise, including Christmas lights (not that m​uch of a fire hazard); in a plane crash (chan​ces of dying on a single flight are 1 in 4.7 million); and yourself (suicide rates are highe​st in the spring). Just take it easy when shoveling the sidewalk.