Deck the halls (extra carefully): Common Christmas injuries, illustrated

By Amy O’Kruk, CNN

Anyone who’s seen December classics like “Home Alone” or “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” knows that holiday decor can pack a punch: Tree baubles turn to glass-shard booby traps, and string lights become tripwires. While neither movie landed any characters in the hospital, in reality, Christmas decor debacles send thousands of Americans to emergency departments each winter.

Every year, an estimated 16,000 people head to the hospital for holiday-decor-related injuries across the United States. In the past two decades, that added up to nearly 312,000 estimated trips to the emergency room, according to a CNN analysis of data from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The CSPC’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System tracks emergency department visits to a sample of about 100 hospitals across the country to make annual estimates of the number of consumer product-related injuries nationally. CNN looked at both estimated and observed (actual ER visits) data from 2023 back to 2004, the earliest records available. The analysis focused on products directly associated with Christmas decor: artificial Christmas trees, Christmas tree lights and both non-electric and electric Christmas decorations.

Christmas-decor injuries have ticked up over time, according to the data. In 2004, there were an estimated 14,400 hospitalizations, compared with 15,600 in 2022. The CSPC said US population growth can be a factor in larger patient numbers over long time periods.

Notably, the Christmas with the highest number of injuries was in 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. That year, the CSPC estimates, there were more than 20,000 hospitalizations.

What to watch out for

Classic, no-frills Christmas decor was the biggest cause of accidents. Of the four Christmas product groups, nonelectric decor — like tree baubles, stockings or wreaths — was tied to about 8,000 average trips to the emergency department every year over the past two decades. Artificial Christmas trees accounted for the fewest: 1,600 per season.

Many of the injuries from nonelectric Christmas decor were lacerations. About 22% of those estimated ER trips involved wounds from cuts with a sharp object. In many of the observed cases, the culprit was glass ornaments.

“Sixty-three-year-old was putting out a heavy glass Christmas decoration, she dropped it on her left ankle,” read one example of an injury report from 2022, detailing a patient’s cut.

Types of injuries

Looking through the records for actual trips to the ER, Christmas-decor accidents show many examples of innocuous decor turned devilish. Besides slips, trips and scrapes, people’s pets, alcohol and myriad other factors contributed to injuries.

The most common injuries associated with Christmas decor are strains and sprains, followed by lacerations, fractures, contusions/abrasions and ingested objects.

The most common location for injuries was the lower back. Other frequent sites were the head, upper back, internal body (from swallowing items, for example) and shoulders.

Thankfully, the vast majority of Christmas-decor mishaps involved relatively minor injuries. Most people were treated in the emergency department and released. Of the more than 7,000 actual hospital trips observed since 2004, there have been two recorded deaths.

On the whole, women are more likely to be injured than men. Whether that’s because women may tend to do more holiday decorating is unclear. About 54% of the hospital visits over the past two decades involved women, compared with 46% for men.

The records also logged what other consumer products were associated with Christmas decor-related injuries. Predictably, ladders came out on top, contributing to 17% of the estimated hospital visits. Despite women being more likely to be injured overall, men were twice as likely to be in accidents involving ladders. Otherwise, containers (such as baskets, boxes or crates), stairs or steps, chairs and floors or flooring materials (for example, carpet dividers) were the other most-cited products.

Be careful setting up and taking down decor

Injuries happen when you might expect. The most dangerous period is following Thanksgiving, when many people start to put up decor. Accidents slow toward the main event of Christmas before picking up again around New Year’s Day, when trees usually start coming down and holiday stuff is packed up.

One of the takeaways from the accident reports is to keep festive decor away from toddlers and pets. There were many reports of swallowed holiday decor among the 4-and-under crowd, and people’s furry friends could also cause Christmas chaos:

“Forty-six-year-old female reports with dog bite to thumb. Bite was provoked by removing a Christmas ornament from [the] dog’s mouth,” stated a 2023 report.

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