Say Goodbye to Santa and welcome to the Grinch: These are the US cities with the least Christmas spirit
It’s that most wonderful time of the year with the halls all decked out with decorations and lights. Cheer is aplenty but in some cities more than others…
It’s that most wonderful time of the year with houses and streets all decked out with decorations and lights to fill the air with the holiday spirit. However, there are some cities in the United States that would appear to have more Christmas spirit than others.
At least that is what data from a recent analysis has found. FinanceBuzz collected data on 50 of America’s biggest cities and came up with a list of ‘The Grinchiest Cities in the US’.
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What US cities have the least Christmas spirit? And the most?
Each city was given a score of 0 to 100 with those scoring the lowest determined to be the “Grinchiest” and the highest-scoring cities the “Jolliest.” Minneapolis, Minnesota came out as the “Jolliest” of them all, while San Antonio, Texas got the title of the “Grinchiest.”
However, if the list were based on holiday events and festivals, Riverside, California blows away the competition with over 930 per 100,000. For comparison, coming in second is Buffalo, New York with over 590. The city with the fewest is Oklahoma City, OK, a measly 20.3 per 100,000.
While the “City of Light” may be second in the holiday events and festivals category its citizens are a generous lot with nearly 75 percent giving to charity. Residents of Miami, Florida are the stingiest in the nation with less than 37 percent donating to charity.
Below are the top ten “Grinchiest” and “Jolliest” cities. But if you want to see how your city compares check out ‘The Grinchiest Cities in the US’ for 2023 by FinanceBuzz.
| The "Jolliest" cities | The “Grinchiest” cities |
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How the cities were ranked on their Christmas spirit
FinanceBuzz collected data about each city for five major Christmas-related categories: “communal celebrations and decorations, holiday shopping, holiday season of giving, holiday cheer, and holiday ‘jeer.’” In order to reach their conclusions, they pulled information from Google Trends, AmeriCorp’s “Volunteering in America” report, YellowPages.com and Eventbrite.
Such things as the number of holiday events and festivals, decoration stores and locations to purchase a Christmas tree per 100,000 residents as well as the number ice skating rinks figured into ‘communal celebrations and decor’ section.
The per capita number of holiday markets, toy stores and other shopping locations were part of the ‘holiday shopping’ category. Along with searches for Christmas cards and wrapping paper.
‘Holiday season giving’ looked at the number of food banks, homeless shelters per 100,000 people and the percentage of the population that volunteered annually as well as donated at least $25 a year to charity.
Data for the ‘holiday cheer’ category came from Google searches for festive topics related to Christmas. While ‘holiday jeer,’ searches for negative terms associated with the holiday including “bah humbug.”