Here's The Christmas Movie Rhode Island Obsesses Over

Americans love Christmas movies. Many families have one or two holiday films they watch together every year. Some kids get to watch “Elf” year after year in school. And it’s the season when you get to debate whether “Die Hard” is a Christmas movie. (Of course it is!)

And just as every family has a favorite Christmas movie, each state does, too. The films mentioned above, of course. But recently, the folks at Streaming Observer teamed up with an analytics company to mine through data from ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, public sources and Google Trends. This, they said, allowed them to determine the movie that each state is obsessed with most relative to other states.

Rhode Island has an affinity for "The Night Before," starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, according to the report released last week. Interestingly, no state was most obsessed with the timeless Christmas classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” which is routinely ranked among the best and most iconic holiday films of all time. Some films were obsessed over in several states, including “Gremlins,” the most-obsessed film in seven states, more than any other. Others included “Home Alone,” “Scrooged” and — of course — “Die Hard.”

A year ago, the most searched-for Christmas movie in Rhode Island was "The Polar Express," starring Tom Hanks, according to Google Trends, which released a trends map for the whole country. The movie which was the most searched-for in 26 states, followed by “Elf,” which was searched for most in 11 states, and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” with eight states.

A separate analysis last year by the site CableTV.com found slightly different results. The authors looked at the best holiday movies as ranked by American Movie Classics and cross-referenced those films against Google Trends data.

In that analysis, “Home Alone” and “Elf,” reigned supreme, with the former being most popular in 10 states — including five in the South — and the latter a favorite in eight states, mostly in the Atlantic Seaboard and the Great Lakes. In Rhode Island, "Elf" was the most popular film, according to the CableTV.com analysis.

Other interesting findings: the Midwest loves Clark Griswold — “Christmas Vacation” was the No. 1 movie in Nebraska, Missouri and Iowa — while “The Nightmare Before Christmas” dominated the West, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada.

Your turn: What’s your favorite Christmas movie? Tell us in the comments or on Facebook

Patch national staffer Dan Hampton contributed to this report.

Photo credit: Photo Credit: Snap Stills/Shutterstock