Brenda Colwell
ENG 363 Literature & Medicine
Winter 2013

Death Takes a Holiday As spoken by Major Margaret Houlihan, RN, “It never fails to astonish me, one minute you are alive, the next minute you are dead.” Welcome to M*A*S*H 4077, Korea; the episode “Death Takes a Holiday” directed by Mike Farrell and was originally aired on December 12th, 1980 (Farrell). In this episode we see the staff struggle with the issue of death. This episode depicts the staff struggling with the issue of death. It is Christmas day and a soldier who was shot by a sniper is brought in to the camp by a Military Police. Colonel Potter, who was dressed as Santa Claus, summons his staff to take the solider for evaluation and treatment. Upon evaluation, it is determined he is a terminal patient suffering from a brain stem injury that he acquired from sniper fire. Today, if he had been in the right place when he was shot he might have stood a chance of survival but with paralysis. Back in those days he was considered terminal and the only choice was to make him comfortable until his death. While medicine in the 1950’s was not as sophisticated as it is today, some of the technology we are using today was just being developed and it was very limited in the United States, let alone in a war occurring in a foreign country. During other episodes of M*A*S*H we saw the physicians struggling with making their own versions of medical equipment that was being developed stateside. One example of how the doctor’s improvised with medical equipment was they had a local jeweler custom make a clamp for vascular surgery. This clamp improved patient outcomes and saved many lives. As the episode continues to unfold, it is brought to our attention that a truce has been called between Allied troops and Korea for Christmas. The following scene next shows a nurse going through the soldier’s pockets. She discovers a family picture of a wife and kids, while two doctors are in the background arguing over whether to continue treatment on the dying solider. In this scene, the Chaplin also begins fighting with the doctors to allow last rites to be administered to the dying solider. This entire scene becomes quite chaotic, and shows how they are all struggling to cope with the extent of the soldier’s injuries and impending death on a holiday (Farrell). As I am watching the episode unfold, I keep noting the time on the clock shown on the wall in the show. The characters are looking at the time passing and I keep calculating how many hours they need to keep the patient alive to make it through Christmas day; they need two hours and thirty two minutes to make it until midnight.
Why is dying on Christmas Day any more special than dying on any other day? Over the course of the Korean War, 474,000 soldiers were killed or injured from 1950 to 1953 for the allied side and another 1 million plus wounded or injured on the enemy side; death was no stranger to this war. (http://koreanwarstuff.com). For the staff of M*A*S*H, death is a daily occurrence and something they have seen numerous time on one day. Maybe it is the thought that a family is losing a husband, father, son, nephew and uncle on what is considered one of the most sacred days of the year, or because for just one day, the staff wanted or needed a day without death. I have worked in healthcare for 18 years and I know personally it is always harder on me to see patients suffering, and families suffering, due to death and illness around the holidays. In reading about deaths around Christmas, I found that Christmas is the deadliest holiday for natural causes. Some researchers have pointed toward the winter for the increase in deaths, others point to the stress of the season, while others feel it is because no one wants to spend the holiday in the hospital; New Year’s and Thanksgiving follow closely behind Christmas (Harris). This astounds me, as I never gave consideration to this, but death does not take a holiday. It comes and goes every day; some days with fanfare and others without.
To the staff of M*A*S*H, I feel it was important to keep Christmas a sacred day for this young man’s wife and children. The nurse struggled with falsifying a death certificate, the solider ceased to breath at 23:28pm Christmas day, then you see one physician walk over to the clock and change the time to 00:05, December 26th. This random act of kindness made the nurse, priest, and physicians question their ethics, actions, and feelings. In the end we see staff walk out and Santa bring them fudge from the Christmas party. Santa reminds them that they have been good girls and boys, and that what they did that day was heroic. In the end, the staff saved a family from forever having Christmas be a day of sorrow and kept some of the sacredness of Christmas.

Works Cited

Death Takes A Holiday: M*A*S*H: Martinis and Medicine Complete Collection. Dir. Mike Farrell. 20th Century Fox Entertainment. 2006. DVD.
Harris, Misty. Christmas the deadliest day of the year:Study. News. 20 December 2010 . 25 December 2013. <http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/12/20/christmas-the-deadliest-day-of-the-year-study/>.
Korean War Stuff: The "forgotten war" remembered. 2013. 25 December 2013. <http://koreanwarstuff.com/>.