Christmas Decorations: Festive Cheer Without Compliance Risk

This article is provided by BRC Associate Member, UL Solutions.

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Christmas decorations are designed to create a little magic. Unfortunately, from a product safety perspective, that magic can disappear surprisingly quickly when a decorative product combines electricity, flammable materials, small parts, batteries or an enthusiastic child.

One of the biggest compliance pitfalls is assuming there is a single set of rules for “Christmas decorations.” There isn't. The regulatory route depends on what the product is, how it works, how it is marketed and how consumers can reasonably be expected to use it. A simple bauble, an LED light chain, an illuminated reindeer, a battery-powered musical ornament and a plush Christmas character may therefore sit within very different regulatory frameworks.

Classification is where good compliance starts.

The first question should not be which tests we need, but what the product is, exactly.

For conventional non-electrical decorations, general product safety legislation typically establishes the baseline. In the EU, this means the General Product Safety Regulation (EU) 2023/988 (EU GPSR). In Great Britain, the General Product Safety Regulations 2005 (UK GPSR) remain the baseline for general product safety compliance. Hazards such as sharp edges, small parts, strangulation, instability, glass breakage, flammability and foreseeable misuse still need to be considered even where no sector-specific CE or UKCA regime applies.

Add electricity, batteries or connectivity and things become more complicated. Depending on the construction and specification, a Christmas lighting product may engage electrical safety legislation, EMC, RoHS and WEEE requirements. Wireless or app-controlled products can additionally bring radio-equipment requirements into play, while batteries introduce another regulatory layer.

There is another trap: festive decorations that look or behave like toys. Decorative articles for festivities are generally distinguished from toys, but putting “this is not a toy” on the packaging cannot rescue a product that is intended for actual play. Play value, marketing, appearance, accessibility and foreseeable use all need consideration. Even where a decoration genuinely isn't a toy, foreseeable access by young children may still mean addressing choking, sharp points, cords and other hazards under general product safety principles.

Christmas lights remain a particular concern.

Lighting chains deserve special attention because European market surveillance evidence shows a persistent history of unsafe products.

According to EU Safety Gate" (the European Commission's rapid alert systems alerts between 2022 and 2026. Alerts increased from 47 in 2022 and 45 in 2023 to 112 in 2024 and 115 in 2025.

The nature of the reported hazards is arguably more significant. Across the wider 2020 to 2026 dataset of 500 lighting chain alerts, electric shock appeared in 466 alerts, or 93%. Fire appeared in 137 alerts (27%) and burns in 104 (21%). Individual alerts can contain more than one risk, so those percentages are not mutually exclusive.

The recurring defects are familiar to electrical safety professionals: inadequate insulation, accessible live parts, ineffective cord anchorage or strain relief, unsafe plugs, inadequately protected wiring and controllers, overheating and insufficient moisture protection on products intended for outdoor use.

For household lighting chains, the evidence package should typically include assessment to the applicable editions of EN 60598-1 and EN 60598-2-20, together with appropriate EMC evidence, RoHS documentation, risk assessment, technical documentation, declarations, labelling and instructions. Relevant power supplies, transformers, controllers and other safety-critical components must also be considered. Harmonized or designated standards can provide a valuable route to presumption of conformity where applicable, but the current edition and status should be confirmed at the time of conformity assessment.

A safer Christmas starts long before December

The recurring Safety Gate findings make the underlying lesson clear: Christmas product safety is not primarily a seasonal problem. It is a product development, sourcing and conformity control problem.

Correct classification, risk assessment, selection of appropriate standards, finished-product testing, tight component control and preparation of a coherent technical dossier should all happen well before the decorations reach the shelves.

The best Christmas decoration is therefore not merely the one that looks good on the tree. From a compliance perspective, it is the one for which the business can demonstrate that the product being sold is the product that was assessed, its foreseeable risks have been addressed, its claims are supported and the necessary compliance evidence remains available in case of a market surveillance action by authorities.

For more details on how UL Solutions can help, you can contact Katie.Ellen.Moore@ul.com