Best Places For Thanksgiving 2019: 1 MD City In Top 100

BALTIMORE, MD — Thanksgiving is fast approaching, and picking the right setting to celebrate the holiday in can be tricky. Do you clean house from top to bottom to host relatives, join the traffic on Maryland highways to travel to see family, or choose a city known for its Thanksgiving traditions?

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

One Maryland city ranked in the top 100 overall among the best cities to visit on turkey day. Baltimore came in at No. 64 nationally.

• Thanksgiving Celebrations & Traditions: 39
• Affordability: 55
• Safety & Accessibility: 92
• Giving Thanks: 15
• Thanksgiving Weather Forecast: 63

Washington, D.C., came in at No. 31 overall.

Though many believe the first Thanksgiving happened in Plymouth, historians in Virginia argue that the true first Thanksgiving took place on Dec. 4, 1619 at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City.

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.

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.