Iowa Ranks 15th in “Most Christmas Spirit”

I've been dubbed the resident scrooge at the office. I think Christmas is incredibly overdone and overrated.

Don't get me wrong -- I love seeing family, giving gifts, and having time to get away from everyday life for a little while. The actual holiday in itself isn't bad at all. I mean, in the traditional sense it's supposed to celebrate the birth of the savior of the world.

A bit difficult to be a downer about that.

It's JUST TOO MUCH. I'M SORRY. There's so much lead-up to a day that ends up being fun, but now -- especially as an adult -- it isn't what it's all cracked up to be.

Therefore, I must not have been factored into this study. Either that or Iowa should've been number one and, by averages, I brought it down. Meh, I'm not too worried about it, to be honest.

For the fourth consecutive year, GetCenturyLink.com decided to measure online activity and area culture in order to determine the rank order of Christmas Spirit by state.

Coming in at No. 15, the Hawkeye State situates itself between No. 14 Nebraska (probably the only thing that Nebraska ranks higher than Iowa in, other than overall suckiness) and No. 16 Wisconsin. New Hampshire to the top spot and New York was No. 50.

Per the company's website, they used six key metrics to determine the rankings, which fell into two separate categories.

ONLINE ACTIVITY

• Google searches for Christmas movies and gingerbread houses (29%)
• Online shopping (via Google shopping trends) for wrapping paper, Christmas cards, Christmas ornaments, and “Elf on a Shelf” (28%)
• Christmas music streaming (14.5%)
• Tweeting about Christmas (7%)

AREA CULTURE

• Number of Christmas Tree farms per capita (7%)
• Charitable giving in the last documented tax year, as defined by the IRS (14.5%)

They added this as well: "We finalized our Christmas spirit ranking by calculating the weighted average for each state across all metrics."