Is Your Family Prepared to Survive Thanksgiving?

As a child, Thanksgiving was always one of my favorite holidays. With an extended family spanning the entirety of the United States from coast to coast, Thanksgiving was one of the few times that my entire family would gather. I remember years of reunions held in my grandparents' house, elaborate meals cooked with care, and priceless memories spent with my cousins and extended family. To this day, I treasure those moments of togetherness. Perhaps you've had a similar experience, with Thanksgiving serving as a means of bringing together family divided by time and distance. Lost in the midst of these pleasant memories is the little-known fact that Thanksgiving is one of the deadliest holidays celebrated in the country.

I'll say it again, because I myself originally had trouble believing the statement: Thanksgiving is one of the deadliest American holidays. When I think of dangerous holidays, I imagine exploding fireworks on the 4th of July or long drives on icy roads around Christmas. I think of tumultuous crowds filling Times Square for the New Year's Eve Ball Drop and the crowd surges associated with Black Friday. But Thanksgiving Day itself, a hazard? Impossible, I thought. So I took some time to research what, exactly, exposes you to risks that you wouldn't necessarily experience on an everyday basis.

Hot Turkeys & House Fires

For each year from 2017 to 2019, fire departments across the country responded to an average 2,300 residential building fires on Thanksgiving Day. Apparently, something about cooking a Thanksgiving meal causes the risk of an in-home fire to skyrocket. Cooking was attributed at the cause for 73.5% of these fires, with over half of the incidents occurring between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. in the evening. If your family experiences a cooking fire, immediately turn off the heat source and try to smother the flames. If a fire occurs in a pot, for example, throwing a lid on the pot may extinguish the fire. When in doubt, call the fire department and evacuate the building. The Plano fire department put together an excellent list of additional fire safety tips to keep in mind over the holidays.

Food Poisoning

Some people, though possessed of the best intentions, are best kept out of the kitchen for the health and well-being of everyone around them. With multiple chefs juggling the responsibilities of putting together a dazzling Thanksgiving arrangement, the odds of food contamination skyrocket. During the Thanksgiving holiday, emergency rooms have historically seen a rise in patients who ate food that was undercooked, improperly prepared, or left out for too long. In some cases, patients have complained of severe stomach pain - one of the classic symptoms of overeating.

Shocking Sports Injuries

From concussions to ankle injuries, impromptu Thanksgiving sporting events have been a leading cause of emergency room visits. One of the strangest stories I came across detailed how a man ended up with a head injury after playing football using a frozen turkey as the ball. As with all other sporting events, be sure you stretch beforehand, don't push yourself beyond your limits, and maybe consider playing football with a traditional game ball.

Unexplainable Accidents

We've already covered the "frozen turkey football" accident, but there were a few other incidents I uncovered that are just too bizarre not to share. They include:

• A man that was injured while wearing a helmet made out of a raw turkey
• A man that suffered burn injuries when he attempted to glaze a ham using alcohol and a match instead of a blowtorch
• A woman that suffered a torn MCL during a game of musical chairs
• An injury caused by a spatula that went flying during a dance-off
• A minor head injury caused by a head-on collision with a cookie sheet

Are You Ready for the Holiday?

Despite my initial dose of skepticism, it seems evident that there's an ever-present risk of injury connected to Thanksgiving celebrations. So I ask - partly in jest - is your family prepared to triumph over the Thanksgiving holiday?