Best place for Christmas is...

So last night I found a list via WalletHub of the best places to do Christmas.  They had a very complcated methodology, which I'd like to hit the highlights of...


Main categories:  Traditions and fun, Observance, Generousity, Costs, and Shopping.

Traditions:

This was based on some rather curious metrics, as was the whole study.  The first was the amount of advance hotel reservations made on Priceline...

Gee thanks, Bill...

Then you have Christmas "events" per capita, the amount of "Christmas event" searches done for each city on Google, Christmas tree farms per capita (believe it or not, Miami FL won that one), and then a bunch of things per capita that really have nothing to do with Christmas per se, such as restaurants (and their diversity-?), night life, bars, ice skating rinks, and so on.  As you can see, we're going to get a real good indication of things Christmassy here.

Out of 100 cities checked, the winner here: New York.  The worst?  Laredo, TX.  Good ol' Fort Wayne got 87th.


Next: Observance, AKA the 'religious section'.  The extent of this was "Share of Christian population", whatever that means, and Churches per capita.  Way to turn over every rock trying to find Christmas's REAL menaing, guys!  In this category, Birmingham AL came out the best; Fort Wayne, the "city of churches", scored 57th, and bottom ranked was the unholy community of Hileah, FL.  All those darn races, I suppose.


Third, Generousity, and this might have been a little more pertinant.  It included giving to charity, per capita food banks and online giving, sharing with the needy- and "Christmas Spirit", which was deduced through some arcane means from their "Most Caring Cities" list.  Here, the philnathropists of the mega-rich left skewed the findings, with Seattle in first.  Ft Wayne led off the bottom ten here at 91st, and this time it was Corpus Christi on the bottom.  Anyone that lives in FTW should now be convinced of the utter failure of their "methodology".


Then comes shopping, with per capita surveys of "Christmas markets", shopping centers, gift shops, toy stores and Hobby Lobbys (one single category), candy shoppes, card shops, and of course decoration sellers.  This pack was led by, amazingly, Las Vegas and Orlando, which proves they didn't distinguish between "holiday" gift shops and "souvenier" gift shops.  Not surprisingly, Fort Wayne blew chunks again- albeit smaller ones at #70- and the worst place to get a gift (considering my above assumption, this one should be a given) is Newark NJ.

Finally we come to cost... and the only thing Christmassy on this list is tickets to Christmas galas.  Other than that, it's how many 4.5 star or higher restaurants, price of three star hotel rooms, average restaurant meal price, average theater ticket, and how much booze runs- all that nice holiday stuff.  Here, the winner was the national cheap date, Oklahoma City.  Irvivne, CA was worst, and FTW came in 85th.  I wonder how this list would square with per capita consumption of Bud Light...

So before we get to the grand finale, Indianapolis was on here, too- how did Ft Wayne stack up against Big Brother?  Well, the only categories that they weren't ranked 50+ places better than the Fort were Observance and Shopping- and there they had us by 30+ each.


So, the very worst places to celebrate Christmas by these standards are:


St Petersburg FL 91st
Garland TX 92nd
Stockton, CA 93rd
Toledo OH (hey neighbor!) 94th
Glendale AZ 95th
Chula Vista CA 96th
Our friends in Laredo 97th
NORTH Las Vegas (I never knew there was a "north" Las Vegas- does what happens there move south?) 98th
Sna Bernadino CA 99th
And those nasty racers in Hileah are 100th.

And the best?  They go like this:

Dallas TX 10th (Hi Holli!)
Seattle 9th (probably an embarrassment to them...)
Chicago IL 8th
Los Angeles CA 7th
San Francisco CA 6th
Pittsburgh PA 5th (Hi Ken!)
Atlanta GA 4th (Hi Doria!)
New York 3rd
Las Vegas 2nd

And Orlando (Hi Mickey!) #1!

As for Fort Wayne- 87th, just 59 spots behind Indianapolis...


From all of us to all of you...