Know what a Christmas market is? If you’re American, you might well not – Wikipedia lists only six of them for our country, while there are closer to 30 entries for Europe. Still, that’s all the more reason to show interest in a new Hitwise report on the subject.
Robin Goad demonstrates that searches for Christmas markets increase by huge amounts during the fall and early winter – a graph shows spikes from about zero to 0.035 percent. It’s not hard to guess why, as the Wikipedia entry portrays these markets as rather wonderful places to find food, drink, and presents.
Still, it wouldn’t be terribly productive to just sit here and dream about Lebkuchen and mulled wine (I have no idea, by the way, if it’s advisable to consume those two things in a single sitting). So we’ll move back to the statistics.
“During November this year, the most searched for locations were UK cities, with Lincoln, Bath and Manchester the most popular,” reports Goad. He then continues, “However, searches for Christmas markets vary depending on term being used and the time of year. People searching for markets outside of the UK are more likely to use the plural. They are also more likely to start searching earlier in the year, presumably in order to allow time to plan travel.”
Americans who are interested in seeing a Christmas market (without leaving the country) might do well to visit Leavenworth (Washington), Bethlehem (Pennsylvania), Tulsa, Baltimore, Chicago, or Denver.
