Christmas is one of the busiest times of the year with extended family barging into your house, frantically sourcing food for said extended family and a multitude of new presents and toys to play with/trip over.
It’s one of the happiest (and stressful) times of the year and it’s the ‘Christmas rush’ that can see people make unscheduled appearances in the hospital if they aren’t careful.
Pre-Christmas, it’s injuries that result from rushing that are most common, like car accidents, hardware injuries or basically falling over things because you aren’t paying attention.
Christmas Day and Boxing Day are a whole other ball game and can be divided into the below categories:
- The ‘I think I’m still 20’ dads
- The kitchen cooks with crazy eyes
- The rogue champagne corks
- The toy minefield
- The decoration disasters
- The Boxing Day Sale Rage Blackouts
The ‘I think I’m still 20’ dads
There are some pretty cool gadgets and toys about these days that are on many teenage boys’ wish lists. Think skateboards, hoverboards or rollerblades. These toys are a magnet for dads that want to show the kids they’ve still got it. Hoverboards in particular are responsible for many broken arms on Christmas Day as Dad tries and fails to relive their glory days; the kids also suffer from near broken ribs from laughing. Best bet is to leave the gadgets to the kids and look on in lofty confidence that you totally COULD smash out a grind on the stair railing – but you just don’t want to.
The kitchen cooks with crazy eyes
The designated Christmas Day cook can usually be identified by hair standing on end, a clenched jaw and a nervous twitch in their eye that gets worse as Christmas lunch draws near. It’s a stressful time cooking for 10+ guests that gets ramped up when unexpected guests turn up! Accidents do happen in the kitchen but even more so on Christmas with burns, crushed toes due to dropped pans or sliced digits due to frantically waving knives through the air. The best advice we can give is to slow down and take it easy – it’s better if lunch is slightly delayed than if you have to make a trip to the hospital!
The rogue champagne corks
We all know Christmas is a time of celebration, and nothing says celebration better than a chilled bottle of champagne. Everyone usually jokes about getting hit by a cork and shenanigans usually ensue – which usually results in someone (the slightly tipsy uncle is a prime suspect) copping a cork to the eyeball.
The toy minefield
We get it. Kids are messy beasts. But on Christmas, those warnings of cleaning up after themselves otherwise you’ll burn all their toys fall on deaf ears. There is just so much new stuff to play with and they need to play with it all at once! This results in adults unwillingly playing Minesweeper in the living rooms with dolls, Lego (more painful than a stonefish to step on), board game pieces and all manner of other detritus littering the room. Couple that with rushing around ensuring Aunty Doris has a wine in hand and the odds of a hospital visit from a trip or a fall just went up exponentially.
The decoration disasters
Sadly, dads are usually the prime target of decoration-related accidents. It can be something as simple as putting the star on top of the tree and being bowled over by the dog, constricting yourself with 12m of fairy lights or taking a tumble from the ladder trying to outdo the next door neighbour so they don’t win the Street Christmas Decoration competition for the fourteenth year in a row.
The Boxing Day Sale rage blackouts
Boxing Day Sale. These words spark fierce determination and knuckle cracking in some, and pure terror in others. Granted, we are nothing like the level that America goes to with their holiday sales, but situations can still get pretty hairy. Before you even get in the shops you need to navigate No-Man’s Land (the carpark) which is where 70% of the stress can take place. After 45 minutes frantically looking for a carpark, your sense of morality and humanity start to decline and you start to seriously consider running over Mrs Pemberton as she ambles slowly across the pedestrian crossing with her shopping.
Once you actually get in the shops you need to deal with the crowds, the pushing, the tug of war over the last Thermomix, your credit card declining or your mother getting crushed in the mall thoroughfare because she hasn’t adjusted her walking speed to ‘Boxing Day Level.’ But is it worth it to score 50% off those pair of shoes you’ve had your eye on? You bet it is.
Remember, the last thing you want to do this holiday season is spend it in hospital with a fractured arm or a busted hip so take a breath, relax and remember what’s truly important – spending time with your family and friends. It’s always a good idea to have a fully stocked first aid kit on hand just in case of small mishaps that may happen, but a lot of the time common sense and a bit of patience can whittle down the potential accidents.
We want to wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and can’t wait to be back onboard next year!
