Map Reveals Each State's Favorite “Unconventional” Christmas Movies & The Top Two Are Really Surprising

For a lot of families, the holiday season is full of traditions. We bake cookies, sing carols, and watch all the same family favorite holiday-themed movies year after year. However, there are a lot of variations within those traditions — some choose on-the-nose options like making candy cane cookies or watching The Grinch, while others think outside the box, like action-packed films that just happen to be set on the backdrop of Christmas. And, if you’re tired of trying to figure out how to watch Rudolph on streaming, this unconventional list might be for you.

A new map supposedly shows which “unconventional” Christmas movies are the most popular in each state — but these aren’t your typical Christmas movies.

Brightspeed Plans wanted to learn more about non-traditional Christmas movies, so they sought out which of these movies was the favorite in each state. “To celebrate the holiday season unconventionally, the team at Brightspeed Plans wanted to find out which alternative Christmas movies America is searching for most,” they explain.

To find this out, they sent out a survey to 1,000 Americans asking questions to help get a feel for their favorite unconventional Christmas movie. In addition, the company gathered a list of unconventional movies from several publications, including Shmoop, Esquire, and Parade, plus Instagram Polls.

From there, Brightspeed Plans used the search analytics platform SEMrush to find out the search volume for each of the movies on their initial list to narrow the selection to the 12 movies with the highest search volumes and paired that with search analytic volumes for each state via Google Trends. And there were some interesting findings.

According to the results, Die Hard is the most searched unconventional Christmas movie, winning the top-searched in 27 states googling it most. In second place was Mean Girls, which was named top in five states. From there, some of the less popular unconventional movies were scattered throughout the states, including Step Brothers, Chronicles of Narnia, Gremlins, and, somehow, Batman Returns.

What does your state love to watch? To check out the full map, including which movie won the top spot in your state, check out Brightspeed Plans.