Why Atlanta is one of the best places to spend Thanksgiving

If you don’t feel like traveling for Thanksgiving, that’s OK. You’ll still be in the second best city for the holiday, according to WalletHub.

“The best cities for celebrating Thanksgiving all have an abundance of high-quality restaurants and places to buy festive decorations, and their residents get very excited for the holiday based on their Google search history,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo explained in the report. “Other features make individual cities stand out; for example, San Diego has great weather, Atlanta has a fantastic track record for on-time flights and San Francisco has surprisingly affordable accommodations.”

To determine the best places to go for Thanksgiving, the financial website compared 100 of the most populated U.S. cities across five key dimensions: Thanksgiving celebrations and traditions; affordability; safety and accessibility; giving thanks; and Thanksgiving weather forecast. It then evaluated those dimensions using 18 relevant metrics, each of which was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions.

With an overall score of 63.73, Atlanta finished second, just behind San Diego (63.89),. According to WalletHub, one of the reasons Atlanta scored so well was its plethora of holiday decoration stores and highly rated restaurants. Being a bustling travel hub also helped.

“One of the biggest stressors when traveling for a holiday is whether your flights will be on time, and Atlanta has a great track record,” WalletHub financial writer Adam McCann reported. “Only 10% of flights arriving to or departing from Atlanta were delayed last November, the third-lowest percentage in the country.”

In each dimension, the city finished:

Atlanta also ranked highly for having more charities per capita than most other featured cities, with residents giving an average 5.5% of income to charity. Georgia’s capital was followed in the rankings by San Francisco and San Jose, California. Dallas came in fifth.

No other Georgia city made the list.