Best Places For Thanksgiving 2019: Charlotte Metro Make The List

CHARLOTTE, NC — Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and picking the right relatives to celebrate the holiday with can be tricky.

The personal finance website WalletHub recently released its 2019’s Best Places to Go for Thanksgiving.

When it came to the best destinations in the Tar Heel State, the Charlotte metro landed in the middle of the pack, according to WalletHub, coming in with a ranking of No. 54 overall among the best U.S. cities to visit on turkey day.

Here’s how WalletHub scored the Queen City region for the holiday:

• Thanksgiving Celebrations & Traditions: No. 52
• Affordability: No. 23
• Safety & Accessibility: No. 49
• Giving Thanks: No. 41
• Thanksgiving Weather Forecast: No. 66

By comparison, Raleigh and Durham scored much higher, at No. 8 and No. 38 respectively. Winston-Salem (No. 58) and Greensoro (No. 75) scored lower than Charlotte.

St. Paul, Minnesota, ranked as the best place to be on Thanksgiving in the nation, according to WalletHub, followed by Scottsdale, Arizona, and Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Some other highlights from the report:

• A Thanksgiving dinner costs less in Laredo, Texas, than any of the other cities reviewed for the report.
• New Orleans ended up with the highest number of turkey day events going on per capita in 2019.
• Stockton, California, finished as the worst place to be on the holiday.

WalletHub compared 100 of the largest cities in the United States across 20 key metrics of Thanksgiving friendliness, including the number of turkey trots per capita, the Google search interest for Thanksgiving celebrations and highway traffic congestion.

Each relevant metric was listed with its corresponding weight and the cities were subsequently graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 representing the best possible Thanksgiving experience.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1621 but wasn’t signed into law as an official national holiday until 1941.

Despite the November holiday being about family and giving back for most people, it’s also become highly commercialized. Thanksgiving Day sales in 2019 are expected to generate $4.4 billion dollars, according to the computer software company, Adobe.

Here are the top 10 places to be on Thanksgiving, with their composite scores:

1. St. Paul, Minnesota: 65.35
2. Scottsdale, Arizona: 65.23
3. Virginia Beach. Virginia: 64.07
4. Orlando, Florida: 62.57
5. Denver, Colorado: 62.48
6. Gilbert, Arizona: 62.18
7. Louisville, Kentucky: 62.13
8. Raleigh, North Carolina: 61.81
9. Irvine, California: 60.57
10. Norfolk, Virginia: 60.11

The full Thanksgiving report is available on WalletHub.