Babies born in December are more likely to live longer, study finds

It’s generally thought that anyone who has a birthday in December has got a rough deal.

Not only is it cold, wet and miserable, but everyone is always too busy (and broke) with festive engagements and Christmas shopping to do anything with you to celebrate.

And don’t get us started on the joint birthday and Christmas presents. Not cool.

But it turns out that there could actually be a major perk to sharing your birth month with Jesus.

A study has shown that if you are born in the last month of the year you could actually end up living longer.

Published in the Journal of Ageing Research, the study suggests that if you are born in the month of Baileys, baubles and being mischievous under the mistletoe you have a higher chance of living up until the age of 105.

But, it's bad news for those summer babies who rub their birthday barbeques and garden parties in all the winter babies’ faces every year – out of everybody tested, it was found that those born in sunny June had the least chance of surviving until that same ripe old age.

Study leaders suggested that this could be to do with birth weight, as previous research shows that babies born in the autumn and winter have had higher birth weights than those born between June and August.

However, despite the lower life-expectancy, the research also shows that those born in the hotter months of the year are still expected to live until at least 80 and often even longer than that.

And of course this doesn’t mean to say that everyone born in December will live until an older age than those born in June, just that in a group of those tested over the age of 100, December-borns were more represented than summer babies.

So no need to go re-thinking when to get pregnant.

After all we do need some summer babies.