YORK, Pa. — When it comes to holiday music, everybody's got a favorite.
Some prefer the swinging classics from Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, or Frank Sinatra. Others like more modern takes.
Recent research from the financial website FinanceBuzz.com determined the most-popular Christmas song in Pennsylvania is the classic "(There's No Place Like) Home for the Holidays," which was first sung by Perry Como in 1954.
The Carpenters released an updated take on the classic in 1979, and their version has become a familiar favorite as well.
The 1953 classic “Santa Baby,” sung by the legendary Eartha Kitt, was the most popular song in eight different states. That’s the most states of any song on the FinanceBuzz list.
Three other songs took the top spot in at least five states: “Jingle Bell Rock,” “It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad.”
The research determined that the most popular Christmas tunes are the old classics. Almost every song on the list was at least 50 years old, according to FinanceBuzz.
There is one notable exception, however: Kelly Clarkson’s 2013 song “Underneath the Tree.” The song is on its way to becoming a modern classic, as it was the most popular Christmas song in four different states, Finance Buzz said.
To view the entire list, go here.
Methodology
FinanceBuzz collected Google Trends search interest data on every Christmas song on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of Christmas 2021. For this analysis, FinanzeBuzz looked at “Search Interest” data for each song in every state.
Search Interest is a metric Google uses that normalizes searches to account for things like population, geography and search proportionality compared to other terms and then scales the results to assign a Search Interest score between zero and 100.
Data for each song was collected individually. To break ties, songs were compared head-to-head directly within the Trends platform.
The time frame for the collected data was set to “Past 5 years.” Data was collected November 9, 2022.
