As you get set to down pint after pint of green beer with thousands of other St. Patrick's Day revelers, you might look around and think that more beer is flowing on this day than any other day of the year.
But you'd be wrong.
According to statistics collected by The Nielsen Company on the number of cases of beer purchased in 2009 for two weeks prior to a specific holiday, sales of beer, green or otherwise, on St. Paddy's Day, failed to crack the top 10 of the most beer soaked holidays.
Which would surprising enough. But it gets even more shocking when you see that it also got beat by
Easter. And
Halloween. Not exactly your typical "Let's have a brew" holidays. Even the Super Bowl, the unofficial Guy Holiday basically sponsored primarily by beer companies, just barely made the list at #10.
So which holidays topped the list?
July 4th lead all with 63.5 million cases of beer sold. Followed by
Memorial Day at #2 with 61 million cases, and then
Labor Day with 60.2 million. None of these should be a surprise, considering they are all three day weekends. And
we plan to take advantage of each one of those days...
Coming in next is
Father's Day with almost 58 million cases cracked open to toast the man who gave us life. And taught us how to open a beer. At the halfway point of the list is
Cinco de Mayo, proving that more people celebrate Mexico's independence with cervezas than with tequila...
Rounding out the back half are
Thanksgiving and
Christmas tied at 52.8 million help-get-me-through-this-day-with-my-family cases, then the dark horses,
Halloween and
Easter with nearly 51 million cases each. Looks like mommy and daddy are having a few treats of their own...
Here's the full list with the number of cases sold two weeks prior, in millions.
1 - July 4th - 63.5
2 - Memorial Day 61.0
3 - Labor Day - 60.2
4 - Father's Day - 57.7
5 - Cinco De Mayo - 54.0
6 - Thanksgiving - 52.8
7 - Christmas - 52.8
8 - Halloween - 50.9
9 - Easter - 50.7
10 - Super Bowl - 49.2
I can't wait to see the new Easter beer commercials...
[Via
USA Today]