A common refrain from the past few years is that the holiday season seems to start earlier and earlier, with big-box and department stores putting out their Christmas decor and seasonal wares before Halloween, let alone Thanksgiving. Wondering if this is a case of stores simply reacting to consumer demand and requests to get the party started because we all need a little Christmas right this very minute, we decided to look at the trends in what America was watching this week to see if Philo viewers are seeking out scary movies to get into the All Hallows Eve spirit or skating full speed ahead to some winter cheer.

On Philo during the month of October there are a similar number of scary Halloween movies available to watch as there are cheerful holiday movies. With that in mind the data team built a “cheer vs scare” index to see what areas of the country are jumping right into the holiday romance movie category (cheer) and where we see Halloween holding its ground (scare).

Our findings show that, overall the country leans a bit more on the cheerful side with the movies our Philo community has been watching. The big regional trends we found are that the Southeast and most of the Mid-Atlantic states tend to stick more with the halloween horror and over-index on scary content, while the Western states and far Northeast trio of NH, VT, and ME are already well into their Christmas movie marathons. The locations that have committed to the horror season the most are Washington DC, Mississippi, and Louisiana while the early season cheer is dominating in Utah, Idaho, and Hawaii.

And for those who were wondering, in this case, we categorized Die Hard as a Christmas movie. Case closed.

Let us know what you’re watching (is there even room for Thanksgiving movies?). Tag us @philoTV with the hashtag #philoblog on our Twitter or Instagram.

Happy Halloween and Happy Streaming!