The F.A.A. receives more than 100 reports a month from pilots who complain that drones have flown too close to their aircraft, an agency spokesman said. Drones have injured people and caused power disruptions.

Drones seem “like innocent toys,” said Brad Koeckeritz, the chief of the unmanned aircraft systems division for the Department of the Interior. But last year, his department “had more than 50 encounters with drones on wildfires,” most of them being flown by hobbyists, he said.

“The bottom line is that midair collisions with aircraft involved in low-level flight on a fire or approaching a runway could potentially have fatal consequences,” he said.

On Christmas Day, with Twitter full of drone drama, Faine Greenwood, a researcher on unmanned aerial technology at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, retweeted messages under the hashtag #dronecrashmas. This was the second year she has “followed the drone-crash beat,” she said. “It’s becoming a major theme on Christmas Day.”

Underlying the humor is concern that “crashing drones on Christmas is indicative of people not taking it seriously enough,” said Ms. Greenwood, who owns five drones and writes about them for Slate. “We need to do a better job of educating them.”

Instead of going to the park, many consumers are flying machines right outside their front doors, without considering wind and pesky trees.