Scores of communities across the country put on special productions for Christmas. Victorian Christmas, culturally oriented Christmases, festivals of lights — all these traditions draw out-of-towners and also create thousands of jobs in the setup, maintenance and performance of these various Christmas rituals.
Below are fast facts from the Fox News Brainroom on jobs created by these Christmas traditions as Fox News goes On the Job Hunt.
Christmas Spending:
• Total holiday season retail spending is more than $430 billion
• $12 billion: The difference between a good Christmas season and a bad one about 1/10 of 1 percent of the U.S. economy
• Holiday sales expected to decline one percent from last year
Christmas:
• Fox News Poll: Some 95 percent of Americans celebrate the Christmas season
• Fox News Poll: 66 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday
Christians:
• Estimated 76 percent of American adults identify themselves as Christians
• Estimated total 173,402,000 self-identified Christian adults in the U.S.
Travel:
• AAA: number of Americans traveling over the holidays will increase almost 4 percent compared with last year.
• AAA: Some 87.7 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more away from home over the holiday period from December 23 to January 3
• AAA: 88 percent of holiday travelers will travel by car
• AAA: Air travel is slated to grow by 2.9% and make up 5% of total U.S. holiday travel
Costs:
• It costs about 4 cents to light a Christmas tree with 200 miniature lights for 4 hours
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