Numerator: Here’s how consumers plan to celebrate key holidays in 2025
Intentions to celebrate are up in nine of 14 holidays in 2025, with Valentine’s Day (up three points) and New Year’s Eve (up two points ) showing the biggest increases.
That’s according to Numerator’s 2025 Holiday Intentions Preview, which outlines how shoppers plan to celebrate 14 key holidays in 2025. Across all holidays, an average of 46% of consumers say they’ll gather with others to celebrate, up from 45% in 2024.
The top celebrated holidays are Christmas (90% of U.S. consumers plan to celebrate), Thanksgiving (88%), Mother’s Day (74%), Easter (68%) and Independence Day (67%).
In other findings, holiday shoppers are most likely to vist grocery stores for Thanksgiving, Labor Day and Independence Day, while more will shop at big-box retailers and online for Christmas and Halloween.
The holidays that are planned one to three months in advance are Christmas (82% of intended celebrators), Halloween (63%), Hanukkah (62%) and Thanksgiving (52%). The most spontaneous holidays (only planned one to two days in advance) for consumer celebrations are Cinco de Mayo (37%) and St. Patrick’s Day (29%).
[READ MORE: NRF: Holiday sales ‘unexpectedly high' with 4% increase over 2023]
- Of the 64% of consumers who plan to celebrate Valentine’s Day, giving gifts and going out to eat will be the top activities. Purchases will be spread across all retail channels, with big-box stores (44%) and grocery stores (35%) the most popular channels.
- Of the 68% of consumers who plan to celebrate Easter, over half say they’ll buy their holiday goods at big-box stores, followed by grocery stores.
- The holidays that focus on cooking or baking at home are Thanksgiving (51% of intended celebrators), Hanukkah (49%), Christmas (48%) and Easter (41%).
- The holidays where going out to eat is much more popular include Valentine’s Day (42%), Cinco de Mayo (38%), Mother’s Day (37%) and Father’s Day (33%).
- Ordering food for takeout or delivery is most popular on Cinco Day Mayo (16% of intended celebrators) and New Year’s Eve (15%).
- Food is the most popular item consumers say they’ll purchase for 10 out of 14 key holidays, with Memorial Day (82%), Labor Day (82%) and Thanksgiving (82%) seeing the highest intent to purchase.
- Alcohol sees its highest percentage of celebrators who intend to purchase on Cinco de Mayo (57%) and New Year’s Eve (51%).
- Candy is the top purchase for Halloween (75%) and Easter (57%).
The Numerator survey was fielded to 5,159 consumers in January.
