Poll Reveals: How Far Would People Drive to Go Christmas Shopping in 2025?
Holiday shopping may look effortless in movies – snow falls softly, nobody fights for parking, and everyone magically knows which artisanal candle to buy. Reality, of course, is different.
But the data from our survey of over 3,000 shoppers hints at something more interesting: people are perfectly happy to drive long distances for a very specific kind of Christmas atmosphere, and the towns that inspire those trips often share subtle common threads.
Below are the patterns that jumped out once the numbers were lined up state by state.
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Key Findings
New England really leans into Christmas, and people repay the effort with serious mileage. Portsmouth hits the six-hour mark, Hanover isn’t far behind, and even the smaller towns like Camden, Lenox, and Mystic draw three-hour-plus drives. It’s the one region where almost every state has at least one town that people treat like a December pilgrimage. The old buildings, the lights, the general “storybook” feel – it all adds up.
Shoppers are willing to make long journeys to towns in the mountain states. In Wyoming and Montana, shoppers happily drive distances that would make most people give up and order online. Jackson and Red Lodge, for example, pull in four-to-five-hour trips, and it’s not hard to see why – the scenery is stunning in December. You’re not just going shopping; you’re changing your altitude.
Local loyalty. Mississippi, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee mostly sit in the 2–3½ hour window. They clearly have beloved holiday towns – Jonesborough, Beaufort, Camden – but people aren’t crossing the whole state to get there. These look more like traditions formed over generations rather than big road-trip productions.
There are outliers in the data. Nebraska City at 4:20, WaKeeney in Kansas at just over three hours, and Red Wing at 4:16 all punch far above what you would expect from their population sizes. These towns clearly have reputations that carry much further than their ZIP codes.
New York locations are dominated by smaller locations. Rather than big tourist cities dominating, it’s Aurora at 4:12 that leads the state. Cooperstown and Skaneateles follow close behind. It’s a reminder that the state’s Christmas charm lives in its small-town corners, not its skyscrapers.
Final Thoughts
What the data really shows is that mileage is emotional, not practical.
People will happily drive four or five hours if the place makes them feel like Christmas actually means something – whether that’s a tiny Maine harbor town, a Victorian street in Arkansas, or a desert hill town in Arizona.
The specifics change, but the instinct is the same everywhere: if a Main Street feels magical enough, distance stops mattering.
