Bah, Humbug or Holly Jolly?

Here’s where Pa. ranks in holiday spirit

We’ve got your holiday spirit right here, in the city of Bethlehem and the borough of Nazareth — in Lehigh and Northhampton counties.

We have Christkindlmarkt and the Christmas City Village, fashioned after the traditional German Weih na ch ts mark ten and nestled in Bethlehem’s historic downtown.

And according to the Pennsylvania Christmas Tree Growers Association, we have more than 31,000 acres of Christmas trees in the commonwealth — a renewable and recyclable resource. Who can say “Bah, Humbug” to that?

If you consider all of the above, not to mention some Lehigh Valley families who hang the Christmas lights before Halloween is over ( all in the name of participating in our annual Christmas Lights Tour ), you’d hope Pennsylvania would get a little more credit as far as Christmas spirit is concerned.

Alas, we didn’t quite manage to crack the Top 10 in CenturyLink’s rankings (we were No. 11 among the 50 states), in which analysts compared data in two main categories: online activity and area culture. They evaluated those categories using metrics like Google searches for Christmas movies, Google shopping trends for wrapping paper, ornaments and “Elf on a Shelf.”

Those aforementioned metrics were weighed more heavily, it seems, then number of Christmas tree farms per capita. And charitable giving fell under ‘culture,’ but actual culture seemed relatively ignored.

A maddening methodology aside, here’s the top 11 states ranked in celebrating the most wonderful time of the year.

Washington

South Dakota

Utah

Missouri

Maine

Tennessee

Alabama

Arkansas Virginia

North Carolina

Pennsylvania