The Best Cities for Christmas in 2020, According To Science

This year, the definition of “the best Christmas city” is somewhat different than usual. It’s not the city with the best window displays or holiday parties. In a season of social distancing, Christmas is all about safety, sticking to admiring your own Christmas tree, and of course, drinking. WalletHub just released its report of 2020’s Best Places for Christmas Celebrations, and the cities on the list reflect the unique Christmas season in which we find ourselves.

To compile the list, WalletHub compared the 100 biggest US cities based on 15 key indicators of a safe and affordable Christmas. Among these criteria are safety, traditions and food, observance, and generosity, and subcategories including number of COVID-19 cases, number of Christmas tree farms, meal prices, churches per capita, food banks per capita, and share of income donated to charity.

According to the list, Durham, NC, is the best city for Christmas this year, followed by San Jose, Honolulu, Oakland, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco. Perhaps surprisingly, warm-weather cities dominate the list, showing that “having a white Christmas” wasn’t one of the criteria.

Among the findings, Miami has the most Christmas tree farms per square root of the population, Honolulu has the fewest COVID-19 cases, Orlando has the most bakeries, Seattle has the most food banks, and some would say most importantly, Indianapolis has the lowest average price of wine.

The top 10 cities and their corresponding data are pictured below. The full list of cities is available on WalletHub.

Photo: WalletHub