The 10 Most Dangerous—and 10 Safest—States to Spend the Holidays This Year

When thinking about the holiday season, most people focus on gatherings with families, presents under the Christmas tree, and their favorite holiday specials on television. What they don’t often think about are the things that can go horribly wrong.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, December is one of the worst months for house fires, thanks to flammable trees and wrapping paper, an increase in the use of candles, and more demanding cooking and baking needs.

Unfortunately, those statistics don’t only apply to inanimate objects. The Christmas season saw a 20% increase in ER visits in 2024 compared to the average day, showing how quickly this cheerful season can sour. With that in mind, healthcare staffing company Nursa did the research to see just how dangerous the holiday season really is—and by state.

Most Dangerous States During the Holiday Season

Nursa compiled data on each state related to safety, including snow accumulation, Google searches about injuries, alcohol consumption and drunk driving statistics, arrest records, building fires, fatal car accidents, and unintentional fatal injury rates. Putting it all together, they were able to find the most and least dangerous states in the United States during the holiday season.

See the ranking of the top 10 most dangerous:

Nursa assigned each state a “Christmas danger score” based on how high they scored on each of the ten criteria. While some states, like Idaho, had high scores across multiple categories, the majority of the states in the top ten earned their spots by scoring the highest for one or more standards.

Vermont is considered the most dangerous state during the holidays by a fair margin. The most prominent reason for this is its probability of having snow on Christmas, which is at a staggering 98.6%.

The next-highest state is Minnesota, with a 68.1% chance of snow. However, this factor alone doesn’t necessarily determine a state’s danger score, as three of the top 10 are actually below the national average of 19.49%.

Three other components in the ranking have to do with alcohol: ethanol consumption per capita, excessive drinking rate, and alcohol-related driving fatalities. Alcohol consumption overall had its highest rates in New Hampshire and Delaware, with 4.67 and 3.52 gallons of ethanol consumed per capita.

However, these states don’t crack the top 10 because they had low rates of excessive drinking and fatalities. Excessive drinking rates were highest in North Dakota and Wisconsin, while the rate of driving fatalities connected to alcohol was highest in North Dakota and Montana.

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Another chunk of the data comes from accidental deaths, looking at unintentional fatal injury rates, Christmas Day fatal car accidents per capita, and how the rate of fatal car accidents in December compares to other times of year. West Virginia and New Mexico had the highest rates of unintentional fatalities, Vermont and Oregon had the highest likelihood of fatal car accidents on Christmas Day, and Montana and Connecticut had the highest increase in fatal car accidents in December.

From there, the danger criteria get more varied, while the most dangerous states stay fairly consistent. December arrests per capita were the highest in North Dakota and South Dakota, both of which were approximately three times higher than the national average. North Dakota also has the highest rate of structure fires (per capita) on Christmas Day, with approximately ten times the odds of having a building fire than the national average, and just under double the odds of the next highest state, Maine.

The last element of the Christmas danger score is based on Google searches about how to stop bleeding, perform the Heimlich maneuver, treat burns, and identify food poisoning. Interestingly, the states that make the highest number of searches per capita, Illinois and Minnesota, are not actually in the top ten most dangerous states, proving that scoring highly on one criterion doesn't necessarily guarantee a high placement overall.

Safest States During the Holiday Season

Turning from the most dangerous states to the safest ones, there are some obvious explanations for why these states are better off during the holiday season. Half of the states listed above are in the southern half of the country, meaning they have lower chances of snow.

In fact, Mississippi has the second-lowest chance of a white Christmas with a 0.2% chance, and seven of the ten safest states have less than a 5% chance of snow on Christmas.

While warmer weather lowers the odds of both ice-related injuries and fires, Utah’s low danger score is likely due to its culture. 68.55% of its population is Mormon, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not believe in drinking alcohol. Accordingly, their alcohol consumption levels and rate of alcohol-related vehicular fatalities are the lowest in the country.

The other top states are nearly all in the bottom two states for at least one of the 10 criteria points. For example, Georgia had the lowest search volume per capita for treating injuries and ailments, and New York had the second-lowest unintentional death rate in the country. Six of the ten safest states showed a decrease in fatal car accidents in December, and four of the ten had no vehicular fatalities on Christmas Day.

This data isn’t meant to scare you if you happen to live in one of the states that ranked highest in this study, but perhaps it will help bring awareness to the dangers that can be lurking in your holiday celebrations.

Try to keep your alcohol consumption to a reasonable level, be careful with flammable materials, and don’t get on the road unless you feel certain that you are in the right state of mind. If you follow those guidelines, the odds are much lower that you will become a statistic in future research.