Christmas myths explored

Are poinsettias really poisonous? Are snowflakes really pure as the driven snow? Does feasting really put on the pounds? Sure as sugarplums, myths and misconceptions pop up every holiday season. Here’s what science says about some of them:

Poinsettias, those showy holiday plants with red and green foliage, are not nearly as harmful as a persistent myth says. Mild rashes from touching the plants or nausea from chewing or eating the leaves may occur but they aren’t deadly, for humans or their pets. Poinsettias belong to the same botanical family as rubber plants that produce latex, so some skin rashes occur in people allergic to latex. According to a Western Journal of Emergency Medicine research review, the plants’ toxic reputation “stems from a single unconfirmed death of a 2-year-old in Hawaii in 1919.”

Dr. Rachel Vreeman, an Indiana University pediatrician who has researched holiday myths, cited a study on more than 20,000 poison control centre reports involving contact with poinsettias.

“In none of those cases were there deaths or serious injury. In fact, more than 95 per cent of them required zero medical care,” she said.

The anglicized name comes from Joel Poinsett, a 19th century U.S. diplomat who brought the plant back from Mexico.

To form snowflakes, moisture high in the atmosphere is frozen by clinging to particles that may include dust specks or soot. Add germs to that list. University of Florida microbiologist Brent Christner has found that bacteria commonly found on plants are surprisingly abundant ice “nucleators” present in snow from populated areas, barren mountain peaks and even Antarctica.

So is catching snowflakes on your tongue a bad idea?

“There’s a yuck factor,” Christner said. “It’s better than yellow snow.”

He said the number of bacteria in snow would probably be about 100-fold less than in the same amount of bottled water.

“There are a lot more things to be worried about in making you sick than ingesting snowflakes,” he said.

The same things that can make holidays merry - great expectations and family time - can also be stressful. Holiday blues are a real thing for many people grieving loss or absence of a loved one, and wintertime can trigger true but transient depression in some people, a condition sometimes called seasonal affective disorder. It’s linked with lack of sunlight in winter and some scientists think affected people overproduce the sleep-regulating hormone melatonin.