Here’s The Favorite Christmas Movie California Is Obsessing Over

Americans love Christmas movies. Many families have one or two holiday films they watch together every year. Some kids get to watch “Elf” year after year in school. And it’s that rare time when you get to debate whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. (Of course it is!).

And just as every family has a favorite Christmas movie, each state does, too. Those films, of course. Most recently, the folks at Streaming Observer teamed up with an analytics company to mine through data from ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, public sources and Google Trends. This, they said, allowed them to determine the movie that each state is obsessed with most relative to other states.

As for unconventional Christmas movies, California has an affinity for "Batman Returns", according to the report released last week. I know what you're thinking. "Batman Returns?" What says Christmas more than Gotham?

Interestingly, no state was most obsessed with the timeless Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is routinely ranked among the best and most iconic holiday films of all-time. Some films were obsessed over in multiple states, including “Gremlins,” the most obsessed film in seven states, more than any other. Others included “Home Alone,” “Scrooged” and — of course — “Die Hard.”

A year ago, the most searched for Christmas movie in California was "Elf" starring Will Farrell and Zooey Deschanel, according to Google Trends, which released a map of the whole country.

To be fair, that could be total nonsense, though.

The map showed just five movies were searched for among all 50 states and Washington, D.C. The most searched for movie across America wasn’t a Christmas classic like ″Miracle on 34th Street″ “or “A Christmas Carol.” No, apparently it was “The Polar Express,” which was searched for most in 26 states, including Texas, Florida, Michigan, Illinois and Georgia. “Elf” was searched for most in 11 states, second highest, followed by “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with eight states.

A separate analysis last year by the site CableTV.com found slightly different results across the country. The authors looked at the best holiday movies as ranked by American Movie Classics and then cross-referenced those films against Google Trends data.

In that analysis, “Home Alone” and, yes, “Elf,” reigned supreme, with the former being most popular in 10 states — including five in the South — and the latter a favorite in eight states, mostly in the Atlantic Seaboard and the Great Lakes.

In California, the most popular film was "Nightmare Before Christmas," according to the CableTV.com analysis.

Other interesting findings: the Midwest loves Clark Griswold — “Christmas Vacation” was the No. 1 movie in Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa — while the “Nightmare Before Christmas” dominated the West, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

Your turn: What’s your favorite Christmas movie? Tell us in the comments or on Facebook!

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

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