Heating up the holidays: Experts say more sex this time of year
BY JASON FINK AND EMILY NGO
New Yorkers have one more reason to look forward to the holidays: It’s the season of sex.
According to biorhythm researchers and makers of sex-related products, the Christmas-New Year’s period produces a year-high spike in sexual activity and conceptions in the United States.
“I would have to agree with that,” said Zack Hemenway, manager of the Pleasure Chest, a sex shop in the West Village. “We definitely do see an increase in people buying stuff for the holiday season.”
Experts attribute the uptick in loving to holiday leisure and New Year’s resolutions to have children. New Year’s irresolution fueled by alcohol and partying is another contributing factor.
“Right before New Year’s Eve is our highest sales peak,” said David Johnson, group product manager for Trojan brand condoms.
A store clerk at a bodega on Ninth Avenue, who wouldn’t give his name, said they too sell more condoms this time of year than any other.
“I don’t know about women, but men like to have fun in the winter more than in summer,” he said.
As expected, the holiday urge surge can also be seen by a peak in U.S. births in September, according to David Lam of the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center in Ann Arbor.
“There are more babies in the fall because you stay in the house all day in the winter,” said Eric B., 42, of the Bronx. “There’s nothing to else to do.”
“It’s cold outside, so of course, people want to cuddle more,” said Darryl Remson, 27, Jersey City.
Holiday intimacies aren’t just an American rite, according to Gabriele Doblhammer of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. Heavy Christmas-New Year’s sex “is characteristic of all Christian cultures in which it has been evaluated,” she and co-researcher Joseph Lee Rogers found.
Recognizing the risks entailed, the British Health Education Authority once ran a condom ad before New Year’s with the tag line: “Just in case old acquaintances aren’t quite forgot.”
What about the notion that spring is the season of love?
Among partners chronically pressed for time, intimacy flourishes in the rare leisure of three-day weekends, analysts said.
Accordingly, the long July Fourth, Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends also produce spikes in condom sales, Johnson said.
So does the run-up to Valentine’s Day, he added.
“And before Mother’s Day, there’s a small peak.”
McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.
