It can be hard to get stuff that requires extended concentration during the business-as-usual part of the year. An uninterrupted morning is vastly more useful than six scattered half-hour blocks between meetings and seminars and helping students. The summer is actually fairly productive for most people for the same reason; very few people are actually off (as in at the beach); they're just not teaching.
There's a brief period of calm between the end of the academic year (which is chaotic with exams, end-of-year stuff, and holiday parties too) and the beginning of the "personal holidays." If you've been mulling something over, now is a great time to finish it off.
Finally, it's nice to start the year with less stuff on your to-do list. I don't think anyone expects more favorable peer review over the holidays; in fact, our lab lore suggests reviewers are grumpier now. In any case, stuff submitted in mid December probably won't even go out for review until next year.
It can be hard to get stuff that requires extended concentration during the business-as-usual part of the year. An uninterrupted morning is vastly more useful than six scattered half-hour blocks between meetings and seminars and helping students. The summer is actually fairly productive for most people for the same reason; very few people are actually off (as in at the beach); they're just not teaching.
There's a brief period of calm between the end of the academic year (which is chaotic with exams, end-of-year stuff, and holiday parties too) and the beginning of the "personal holidays." If you've been mulling something over, now is a great time to finish it off.
Finally, it's nice to start the year with less stuff on your to-do list. I don't think anyone expects more favorable peer review over the holidays; in fact, our lab lore suggests reviewers are grumpier now. In any case, stuff submitted in mid December probably won't even go out for review until next year.