Photo: Disney
Anybody who loves to cozy up on the couch and watch Christmas movies knows that holiday films feature a surprising number of accidents and injuries during their run time. While Home Alone probably comes to mind for most people when it comes to holiday films with a lot of accidents, there are actually quite a few films with a high injury count. From the more obvious movies, such as Die Hard and Home Alone, to the more surprising ones, like Elf and It's A Wonderful Life, it seems Christmas movies are actually pretty dangerous.
To see just which films have the most injury-prone characters, National Accident Helpline analyzed ten classic Christmas films, and logged each time a key character suffered an accident that would lead to an injury. The study uses official National Health Service guidance on recovery times to show the impact all the injuries would have in reality. Here's what they found:
Home Alone is the Christmas film in which characters sustain the most injuries, with 43 separate injuries shown on-screen. An injury is shown on screen every 2 minutes and 24 seconds on average during the relatively short run time of Home Alone.
In Elf, Will Ferrell’s Buddy suffers only three injuries fewer (17) than John McClane sustained (20) while defending Nakatomi Tower from robbers in Die Hard. Marv from Home Alone, however, suffers the most individual injuries of any Christmas film character. It would take him 2 years, 4 months, 1 week and 6 days to recover from all the injuries Kevin McCallister inflicts on him during the film.
Photo: National Accident Helpline
Here's the official tally of total injuries sustained in these classic Christmas films:
- Home Alone (1990) – 43 injuries
- Jingle all the Way (1996) – 30 injuries
- Die Hard (1988) – 20 injuries
- Elf (2003) – 17 injuries
- Deck the Halls (2006) – 13 injuries
- National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) – 10 injuries
- Scrooged (1988) – 9 injuries
- The Christmas Chronicles (2018)—8 injuries
- It's a Wonderful Life (1946) – 7 injuries
- The Santa Clause (1994) – 2 injuries