Staying in Atlanta for the holidays this year? Lucky you. According to a WalletHub analysis, you’re already in 2024′s best city to celebrate the holiday.
“With inflation making Christmas celebrations, gifts, food and travel more expensive, certain cities are much better for your wallet than others during the holiday,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo said. “In addition to being affordable, the best cities have a large number of people celebrating, plenty of places for Christians to worship, populations who give generously to charity, and plenty of fun activities to enjoy with family and friends.”
To determine the best cities for celebrating Christmas, WalletHub compared the 100 most populated across five dimensions: traditions and fun, observance, generosity, shopping, and costs.
Those dimensions were divided into 28 key metrics, ranging from Google search interest to food banks per capita. Each metric was graded on a 100 point scale, with a score of 100 representing the most favorable conditions. Atlanta topped the list with 63.65. The lowest score in the rankings belonged to North Las Vegas, Nevada, which earned a 32.58.
Atlanta earned seventh place for traditions and fun, 28th for observance, 14th for generosity, sixth for shopping and 60th for costs. Pittsburgh, Seattle, Las Vegas and Orlando, Florida, finished out the top five, in that order.
“Atlanta is the best city for Christmas celebrations this year, with plenty of stores to help you prepare for the holiday, including an extremely high number of bakeries, holiday decoration shops and card shops per capita,” WalletHub reported. “Atlanta is also one of the best cities when it comes to the prevalence of affordable restaurants rated at least 4.5 stars, if you want to eat out for the holiday (or want a break from cooking afterward).”
Atlanta also ranked ninth for having more Christmas tree farms per capita than most of the country.
It was also ninth for its percentage of charitable donators. If you look at just online donations, Atlanta was 13th.
“In addition, Atlanta residents get very excited about Christmas, searching Google for terms relating to the holiday more frequently than people in most other cities,” the personal finance company said.
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