The Cities
Most Obsessed
with Christmas

Christmas is, once again, around the corner. Google has revealed that the UK is the world’s most Christmas obsessed country (even more than the US!), but where exactly do its most Christmassy residents live?

To find out, Barratt Homes has analysed data from Google and Twitter to find out which UK cities love this festivity the most.

The maps below show which cities make the most Christmas-themed tweets and Google searches. Clicking on the Christmas tree or the snowman will provide more information about the data from that city.

Christmassy Tweets
Christmassy Google Searches
2020/21
Live
*tweets divided by population times by 10,000

The cities that tweet about Christmas the most

Using data from Brandwatch, which estimates how many tweets are posted on a specific topic from any location, we could establish which UK cities tweet most about Christmas. We weighted these results by population to avoid bias towards the most densely populated cities, such as London.

We found out that York is the city that tweets most about Christmas. Over the last two Christmas seasons, more than 240,000 Christmas-themed tweets were posted per 10,000 people living in the city (per capita).

Not only do people in York love posting about Christmas, but they also have the highest percentage of positive tweets. 37% have a positive sentiment, with only 14% considered negative.

Lisburn, in Northern Ireland, and Southend are also among the keenest on Christmas, posting over 100,000 tweets per capita. Lincoln doesn’t make as many posts, though 36% are positive, making it the second-highest total out of the 40 cities we analysed.

With the map above you can also view live data to track which cities are tweeting about Christmas the most this year.

The cities that make the most Christmas-themed Google searches

In addition to Twitter data, we’ve also analysed Google search data to find out which cities make the most Christmas-related searches.

Of the 20 most densely populated UK cities, people based in Cardiff are believed to be the most obsessed with Googling Christmas-related topics. On average, they make over 16,000 searches per capita during November and December.

Its Welsh neighbour, Swansea, is second, followed by Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland and Southampton.

The most popular Christmas-themed questions searched on Google

We also dug deeper into our Google search data to find out what Christmas-related questions the UK is searching for over the festive period.

The question people are most curious to know the answer to, is “How Many Days Until Christmas”. Also among the most popular questions are Santa themed questions such as ‘Where Is Santa’, ‘How Old Is He’ and ‘How Many Reindeer Does He Have’. Other frequently searched queries are ‘What To Write In A Christmas Card’, ‘When Is Christmas Jumper Day’ and ‘How To Decorate A Christmas Tree’.

Arts and crafts-themed searches are also popular, with people keen to learn how to draw a Christmas tree, Santa and his reindeer, in addition to how to make a Christmas wreath.

If you’re unsure about what you want for Christmas this year, why not ask Google? “What Do I Want For Christmas” is the 12th-most popular Christmas question people search for over the festive period.

Annual Searches

Methodology:

Google search data was generated from Google Keyword Planner using search volumes between November and December 2020 and 2021. We pulled a mix of 320 Christmas-related searches (single words, phrases, food, film, longtail Qs etc) to determine which cities do the most Christmas-themed searches. We split these searches by themes to find out which people searched for the most during the festive period. We weighted the search volume for each city by population for balance. The final figures are the average of data for 2020 and 2021. The UK cities we analysed are the 20 most populated.

As for the most searched Christmas-related questions, we only included those with the highest search volume. For instance, we’ve discarded ‘how many weeks until christmas” and “how many sleeps until christmas to prioritise ‘how many days until christmas'.

As for the cities that tweet most about Christmas, data was pulled from Brandwatch. We analysed how many tweets included any of the 328 Christmas-themed keywords posted between November and December 2020 and 2021 that are geo-tagged to UK cities. We also used Brandwatch to analyse these tweets’ positive and negative sentiments. We had enough data available to evaluate 5,808,776 tweets from 39 UK cities.

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