As the well-known song aptly states, the holidays can be the most wonderful time of the year. Decorating your home, wrapping presents, and spending time with loved ones are usually fun times, but in all of the hullabaloo, serious accidents can happen. While everyone should be able to enjoy the season to the fullest, the holiday rush can make us careless. Then, if you couple that with winter weather, extra travel and family stress, it's a recipe for disaster.

There is usually a major uptick in transportation fatalities around Christmas and New Years. In 2017, 329 people died in vehicle accidents on New Years Eve, and 299 died on Christmas Day, according to the National Safety Council (NSC). One-third of those fatalities involved alcohol impairment.

But travel is just one part of the potential danger people face around the holidays, so here's a guide for how to avoid common accidents during the holiday season:

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Decorating

Making your home look festive for the holidays can be a great way to bond with loved ones and really embrace the holiday spirit, but it can also lead to a number of mishaps.

Artificial Christmas trees and dry, live trees are highly flammable. If they're set up too close to open flames, like candles or a fireplace, or if they're near faulty wiring, they can easily catch fire, and if they do, the resulting fires tend to be catastrophic.

In order to avoid such a dangerous scenario, the NFPA recommends checking all your string lights for frayed wires and cracked or broken bulbs before putting them on your tree. Make sure you use a single extension cord rather than one that's plugged into a heavily utilized adaptor. You'll also want to keep trees at least three feet away from any heat sources, like fireplaces, radiators and portable heaters.

Ornament hanging

If you're hanging ornaments on a particularly tall tree, you'll want to use an appropriate ladder so that no one falls and hurts themselves. If you're using a step stool and find yourself reaching on your tippy toes to place ornaments near the top of the tree, you need a taller ladder.

If you have pets or small children, keep breakable/swallowable ornaments away from the bottom of your tree so they can't be easily pulled off.

Plant decorations

While holiday plants like holly, mistletoe and amaryllis can be festive, they can also be poisonous if swallowed. It's best to keep them out of the house if you have pets and/or young children.

Fireplace and candle use

It's always nice to have a crackling fire while you're decorating and wrapping presents, but if you do, be sure to take the usual fireplace safety precautions like making sure the chimney is clear and checking for any creosote buildup (tar-like substance that can cause chimney fires). You'll also want to avoid throwing any Christmas tree branches, wreaths or pine needles on the fire as they're highly flammable and can pop/ignite when burned.

Meanwhile, candles are responsible for one-third of all holiday decor-related fires, so it's important to keep them far away from anything flammable, such as curtains, pine needles, or wrapping paper. It's also a good idea to keep them out of reach of animals and small children and to put them on a plate or under a protective covering, like hurricane glass.

Cooking a big holiday dinner

A holiday meal with extended family or friends can be a real treat, but when there's so much holiday chaos going on around, chefs can easily get distracted. According to the USFA, cooking is the number one cause of winter home fires. So what's the best way to avoid them? Make sure you've always got someone in the kitchen keeping an eye on what's on the stove and in the oven. When the meal is ready to serve, double check that every flame and nob is turned off. If you think you'll forget, set a reminder for yourself on your phone.

Eating that big holiday dinner

Just because things are hectic during the holidays doesn't mean you shouldn't be diligent about prepping food safely. That means wiping down surfaces after raw meat has touched them, washing vegetables thoroughly and making sure everything is properly cooked.

Here are some additional specific food safety tips from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Wash your hands before and after you've been handling food, keep raw meat away from produce, use a meat thermometer when cooking meat to make sure it's cooked thoroughly, and use separate cutting boards and utensils for cooked and uncooked meats.

Gift giving

Giving gifts can be one of the best parts of the holidays, but if you're gifting to young children, you'll want to take certain precautions when choosing what to give them. Children under three-years-old, for example, shouldn't receive toys made up of small pieces that they could swallow and choke on. Toys with small batteries or magnets also pose a choke threat and can be extremely harmful or even fatal if swallowed.

If you're shopping for a child under 10, you'll want to steer clear of anything that has to be plugged into an electrical outlet because a child might incorrectly insert the plug and get electrocuted.

Finally, it's a good rule of thumb to check for any toy safety and recalls on the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's website before going shopping.

Holiday travel

Traveling in and around the holidays can be especially treacherous. The combination of snowy and/or icy weather with travelers rushing to get to their destinations is the reason why there are so many transportation injuries and fatalities during this time of year. The best way to avoid such serious accidents is to plan ahead. Get your car ready for winter conditions before they happen. Check the weather before you leave the house, and make sure the roads are safe to drive. When in doubt, leave much earlier than you think you need to so you don't rush should you hit traffic (which, let's face it, you likely will). And finally, if you're already at a holiday party and the roads suddenly become treacherous, stay where you are rather than chance traveling back home at the end of the night, especially if you've had anything to drink.