Holiday Safety Tips for 2025: Keeping Your Family and Community Safe This Season

Holiday Safety Tips for 2025: Keeping Your Family and Community Safe This Season

By: Vivian Havlin

The holiday season is one of the most joyful times of the year, but it also brings unique safety challenges. From crowded stores and porch package thefts to online scams, travel risks, and emotional stress, being proactive can help keep your family, home, and community safe.

As we head into the 2025 holiday season, here are some practical and updated safety tips you can use at home, at work, and on the go.

Let’s start with protecting your home while you celebrate. Holiday gatherings and vacations mean many homes are left unattended. Criminals know this so here are some steps we all can take. Avoid posting travel plans or real time vacation photos on social media, instead share them after you return. Use smart home devices like doorbell cameras, automated lights, and motion detectors. Now we can monitor everything from our phones. Keep gifts out of sight from windows (remember Santa doesn’t come once we set the Christmas Tree but the night before). Decorating Christmas Trees with presents is tempting to burglars. Ask trusted neighbors to pick up packages and mail. If you host a party, secure personal items in a private room.

Now, let’s protect our packages from theft. We can reduce the risk by utilizing Amazon lockers, UPS Access Points, or in-store pickup. Yes, it’s inconvenient but safer this way. Delivery scheduling when someone is home, package hold services offered by USPS & other Carries and have visible cameras near entryways. Here at Citizens’ Crime Watch we will always encourage working with your neighbors and in this case, we can ask them to keep an eye out for suspicious vehicles following delivery trucks.

While scams are always present in our lives today, holidays are no exception. Scammers get more sophisticated every year and in 2025, AI generated messages, fake charity sites and realistic voice clones are more common. Be alert for text or emails that “confirm” purchases you didn’t make, grandparents scams using cloned voices of loved ones continue, fake holiday charity campaigns and social media “giveaways” or shopping deals that seem too good to be true. The best way to stay protected is to “stop, verify, never send money, gift cards or personal information unless you initiate the contact”.

Traveling whether flying or driving sometimes is inevitable if you have family that lives out of town, like millions that travel for the holidays. Always plan ahead for safety. If you are flying keep bags within reach at all times in the airports, use AirTags or tracking devices in checked luggage, keep medication and valuable in your carry on and download airline apps for real-time updates.  If driving is crucial to service your vehicle before long trips, plan routes ahead of time holiday traffic can cause delays and stress, never leave shopping bags or electronics visible inside your car and take breaks to avoid fatigue.

For our kids and teens, we must remember that this comes with screen time, whether to keep them entertained during a road trip or at the airport or even at home when they are off school. This is a good time to discuss internet safety with them. Aside from that please keep a “family meeting point” in malls or events; really anywhere with crowds, for younger kids teach them to identify safe adults such as uniformed personnel or store employees. For teens, discuss rideshare safety and curfews. Remind them that AI generated sextortion scams targeting teens are on the rise (no sharing personal photos EVER). And always have them share their real time location with parents or guardians.

While shopping the key points are easy, always stay aware of your surroundings, especially in parking lots. Avoid carrying large amounts of cash, keep your purse zip and wallet in a from pocket, please park in a well-lit area and lastly avoid going from store to store leaving your shopping bags in the car.

Preventing fire and home accidents should also be on our to-do list when it comes to safety this holiday season. We need to keep live Christmas trees watered; dry trees ignite quickly. Don’t overload outlets or power strips, place candles away from curtains, decorations and children, and test smoke alarms and CO detectors before hosting guest.

And for my final message. The holidays should be full of joy, celebration and connection with loved ones and neighbors. With a few smart precautions you can protect your loved ones. From our Citizens’ Crime Watch Family to yours, have a happy, healthy and safe holiday season in 2025!

Until next time—stay informed, stay safe, and keep looking out for one another. Because when we know better, we protect better.

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