Christmas is a time for giving and receiving, but it can also be a time of loss. Mainly, losing decorations inside your body while stimulating your prostate. An unexpectedly festive review of 1,806 emergency department visits for “rectal foreign bodies” found that 22.7% of visitors had items like vibrators or massage devices stuck in their butts. However, a surprising 58.5% of visitors had items that mysteriously fell into the “other” category. This included a long and naughty list of items such as golf equipment, bathtub and shower fixtures, cleaning brushes, phones and electronic accessories, and Christmas decorations.
A seasonal sex injury like this may be embarrassing, but it is not exactly shocking. The prostate gland, located in front of the rectum, is so densely packed with nerve endings that it’s known as the male G-spot. Research has found that men are more than twice as likely to have an orgasm from receiving anal sex as compared to women (when no other stimulation was provided), perhaps because of the presence of the prostate. In other words, butt stuff feels good. And to the untrained eye, some garlands and Christmas tree decorations are so butt-plug-shaped that it makes it seem like the holiday is a ruse for covert sex toy product placement. There’s even been certain decor that has inspired multiple viral videos warning holiday celebrators not to succumb to temptation. Honestly, it’s the perfect storm.
Dr. Adam Aston, a medical doctor browsing through Target’s Christmas decorations, was one of the first to issue a warning, cautioning that just because a Christmas tree decoration is “ribbed” does not mean it’s for your pleasure. “Anyway, happy holidays. Stay safe out there, and don’t put things where they don’t belong,” the assistant professor of clinical medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center says, signing off.
From an anatomical perspective, it is pretty easy to lose objects during anal penetration because of how the body is designed. Dr. Kathleen Rowland explains that the anal sphincter is the band of muscle around the anus that is under voluntary control. It “opens and closes to let gas and feces out, and can be relaxed voluntarily to allow sex toys, a partner, or other objects in,” Rowland says. “At rest, it is closed, which is why we have fecal continence.” The sphincter is the narrowest part of the anorectal anatomy, which makes inserting a foreign body a higher risk, because once that object passes through to the rectum, it will usually take more than a Christmas miracle to get it out.
The problem is that the rectum is wider than the anus and can stretch significantly more because its “anatomic job is to hold feces,” Rowland says. That is why medical devices designed for the area, like anoscopes, are flared, so they can stay safely outside the body. The same goes for sex toys designed for anal penetration. Or as Rowland puts it, “objects that are not flared can slide past the anal sphincter, after which the sphincter closes, trapping the object in the rectum.” In other words, the same security system that keeps you from crapping your pants constantly can just as easily trap a sex toy up there. God giveth, God taketh away.
Despite having a physiological justification for using sex toys anally and an anatomical explanation for getting them lost, it can be embarrassing. Consequently, people are not always forthcoming about what happened. Yet another study of rectal foreign bodies in Trinidad and Tobago found that most patients initially gave false explanations of what happened, but later admitted to using objects for sexual pleasure once they established a rapport with the attending physician. This type of fib is so common that to nurses on Reddit, it’s its own category of lie: the “I just slipped, and it accidentally went up my butt” story.
While a sex injury is never ideal, you should never let that shame keep you from getting medical attention. “The ER staff has seen this all before, over and over,” says sexologist Carol Queen. “You aren’t the first and won’t be the last.” To get ahead of the holiday season, set yourself up with a toy that is suited for safe anal penetration, along with some lube. That way, when your judgment is impaired because you’re horny, you won’t look for something comparably shaped in the heat of the moment and have an accident that makes its way into a peer-reviewed journal. With proper equipment on hand, tiny Christmas trees and other decor can remain as virginal as a pregnant Mary.