Women have less sex at Christmas but peak on New Year, study suggests

Christmas might be a time for love and happiness, but apparently not in the bedroom.

According to a recent study women have significantly less sex in the three days running up to Christmas Day, which is followed by a huge peak in sexual activity at New Year.

This surge eclipses even that on Valentine’s Day and contributes to higher birth rates during the following September, the study suggests.

The findings were discovered after researchers at Stanford University in California looked at data from women’s health app, Clue, to try to better understand our sexual habits.

Users on the app can anonymously log their sexual activity, with information collected from more than 500,000 women in the UK, France, Brazil and the US.

The research showed that seasonal holidays – including bank holidays and Valentine’s Day – were always associated with a peak in sexual activity, but the opposite was true of Christmas, with sexual activity dropping off almost completely in the run up to December 25.

“In the case of younger or child-free women, this could be due to them spending Christmas with their parents, rather than romantic partners,” commented Laura Symul, one of the researchers.

And Dr Jacqui Gabb, chief relationship officer at Paired and professor of sociology and intimacy at The Open University, agrees that family obligations at Christmas can dampen sexual drive.

Speaking to The Independent, she said: "Women often carry the family responsibilities on their shoulders during the holidays, which includes wrapping and buying presents, stocking up on food, decorating the house and even helping manage Christmas spirit in the home. 

"Most of the time this means women are simply exhausted and not in the mood to have sex, especially in the lead up to Christmas when all of these obligations crank up a notch.

“In other cases I’ve seen women admit they feel so bogged down with responsibility that they withhold sex from their partner, in the hope of retaining more power in the relationship around Christmas."

According to the research, sexual appetite returned on Boxing Day with a sustained surge right the way through to New Year’s Eve and a large spike on 1 January - although because of the way the app works, any sexual activity after midnight on 31 December would be logged as New Year’s Day sex.

This sexual surge not only occurred in the UK, but across all of the countries that were included in the research.

Dr Jacqui says: “New Year is a time to let our hair down and have fun, which means sex can seem much more inviting - especially if alcohol is involved. It’s also a time where people think about new beginnings, and many may decide to start trying for a family."

Symul and colleagues also compared their data findings with official birth records for each country and found a slight increase in birth rates between June and November in the northern hemisphere countries, peaking in September in the UK - exactly nine months after New Year’s.

Combined with seasonal variations in human fertility, the researchers believe our holiday sexual habits could explain these peaks in the birth rate.

Micaela Martinez at Columbia University in New York, who was also involved in the research, adds: “We think these two things are acting together to shape the birth seasonality that is experienced in the real world."

The research was published as a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed.