Well, sadly, it’s official, Washington D.C. has been rated as the least festive place in the country based on a study by Innerbody Research that was released at the end of November this year. The study’s methodology was to break down all the most common Christmas and holiday-related Google searches made in each state (and the District of Columbia obviously) throughout the holiday season of 2022 and it turns out that D.C. doesn’t display a whole lot of festive spirit when it comes to Google.
It turns out the District of Columbia was dead last, ranking at number 51, or the absolute least festive place in the country! In terms of the data, D.C. had a total sum of only 1301 total searches for queries included in the study and the closest other state that ranked at number 50 was interestingly the state of New York, which has 1432 total holiday-related searches during the same period.
Ranking the most festive states in order
It turns out that the list of most festive states based on this study ranks as follows:
- West Virginia
- Idaho
- Utah
- Nebraska
- New Hampshire
- Missouri
- Wisconsin
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Montana
- Indiana
- Ohio
- Delaware
- Pennsylvania
- Oklahoma
- South Dakota
- Maine
- Iowa
- South Carolina
- North Carolina
- Tennessee
- Rhode Island
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- Vermont
- Wyoming
- Alabama
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Mississippi
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Illinois
- Texas
- Connecticut
- Arizona
- New Jersey
- Oregon
- Colorado
- Virginia
- Alaska
- Georgia
- California
- Washington
- Massachusetts
- Nevada
- Maryland
- Hawaii
- Florida
- New York
- District of Columbia
How did the study measure “festiveness”?
As mentioned above, the study relied on Google Trends data to measure the most and least festive states in the U.S. by tracking how often they searched a long list (apparently dozens) of queries that are related to Christmastime festivities throughout December 2022. Some of the most basic examples of queries that were included in the study’s data included searches for things like Ugly Christmas Sweater, Christmas Eve, Secret Santa, Christmas Tree, Advent Calendar, Christmas Lights, Christmas Movies, White Elephant, and many more!
Nonetheless, while the data is from 2022, the title of least festive place in the country falls to Washington D.C. at least until the study is repeated next year, which means that right now is the time to search for as many things related to the holidays as possible to get our rating up for next year!