December splits travelers into two camps and I’ve happily belonged to both. Some years I want my breath to fog and my hands wrapped around a paper cup of something spiced and too hot to drink yet. Other years I just want sand and a horizon with nothing on it. The lovely thing about this month is that it rewards either instinct — and it rewards planning even more, because in December the gap between a magical trip and a stressful one comes down almost entirely to timing: which week you go, how far ahead you book, whether you read the weather right. Here’s where I’d point you, depending on what you’re chasing.
At a Glance
- Christmas-market magic: Vienna, Strasbourg, Prague — some of the oldest markets in Europe, mulled wine and snow settling on Gothic spires.
- Beach and sun: Maldives, Riviera Maya, Cape Town — dry-season skies, warm water and Christmas dinner served outdoors.
- Northern lights: Tromsø, Abisko, Reykjavík — polar darkness and the most reliable aurora window of the year.
- A New Year like nowhere else: Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, Sydney Harbour fireworks, the quiet of Japan’s temple bells.
- Wildlife and big landscapes: Antarctica, Patagonia, Costa Rica — Southern Hemisphere summer running at full tilt.
Winter Wonderlands & Christmas Markets
If you’ve never stood on Vienna’s Rathausplatz with the City Hall lit up and the smell of roasted chestnuts thick enough to lean on, move it near the top of your list. The Viennese have been doing this a very long time; the city runs more than twenty official Advent markets and they’ve been part of winter here since the Middle Ages. Rathausplatz is the showpiece, with a skating path that loops through the park. But give an evening to the quieter ones too — Spittelberg’s lantern-lit lanes, the artisan stalls tucked beside Belvedere. Bundle up properly. December hovers around freezing and often grey, which is exactly the weather these markets were built for.
Strasbourg makes a different case and backs it up. It calls itself the Capital of Christmas and has the receipts: its Christkindelsmärik has run since 1570, one of the oldest in Europe. The whole Grande Île, a UNESCO-listed island at the city’s heart, disappears under lights and the half-timbered houses of Petite France look genuinely unreal in the fog that likes to settle there. Eat the bredele, drink the vin chaud, climb the cathedral platform after dark for the view over it all.
And if your idea of magic runs medieval, go to Prague — snow on the spires, the Old Town Square market under that Gothic backdrop, hand-blown ornaments and a sky that’s fully dark by half past four. Sounds grim, until you’re three minutes into a warm café and quietly grateful for the early night.
Tropical Escapes & Beach Sun
For the sand people, December turns the northern winter into the whole point. The Maldives flips into high season now: the northeast monsoon brings clear skies, calm water and the kind of visibility divers daydream about. One honest caveat, because I’ve watched people book on the wrong promise — the famous manta and whale-shark gatherings at Hanifaru Bay actually peak in the other half of the year, roughly May to November, when the plankton blooms. You can still find whale sharks year-round down in South Ari Atoll and divers will cheerfully argue the exact spots and timing, but come in December for the glassy water and the sunsets, not a guaranteed manta circus. Book the overwater villa early; it’s the most expensive month of the year.
Mexico’s Riviera Maya is the friendlier, easier warm-December, especially with kids along. The dry season is just settling in around Cancún, Tulum and Playa del Carmen, so you get sun without the swampy summer heat — Caribbean water at swimming temperature, cenotes to snorkel, ruins you can actually walk instead of melt through. Tulum’s candlelit dinners on the sand are worth the splurge, though for Christmas Eve you’ll want to reserve well ahead.
Chasing the Northern Lights
There’s a kind of December trip where the sun barely shows up and that’s the whole appeal. Tromsø, in Arctic Norway, sits right under the auroral oval yet stays surprisingly mild for it’s latitude (thank the Gulf Stream), so you get the green ribbons overhead without the brutal cold you’d brace for. The sun never really rises during the polar night, but those few hours of deep blue twilight are their own strange gift. Book a multi-night aurora chase rather than betting everything on one clear evening; the weather up there turns fast.
For the most reliable show, I’d send you to Abisko in Swedish Lapland. A quirk of the surrounding mountains carves out a “blue hole” of clear sky even when everywhere nearby is socked in, which is why aurora hunters treat it as about as close to a sure thing as this gets. Ride the chairlift up to the Aurora Sky Station, stand on a dark summit with almost no light pollution and wait. Reykjavík is the easygoing alternative, with lights plus glaciers and geothermal lagoons in one trip, but rent a car only if you’re genuinely at ease driving on ice.
New Year, Done Properly
Some cities throw a New Year’s party; a few treat it as a calling. Edinburgh’s Hogmanay runs three days and feels half-pagan: a torchlit procession through the old town on the 30th, a huge street party on the 31st and the Loony Dook on New Year’s Day, when cheerfully unhinged crowds plunge into the freezing Firth of Forth. The street party is ticketed, so buy ahead. It’s cold, usually wet and nobody there seems to mind in the slightest.
Sydney is the mirror image: New Year’s in board shorts. As one of the first big cities to cross into the new year, it lights up the Harbour Bridge and Opera House with a fireworks display the whole world half-watches, while the city spends late December living outdoors. Want a free vantage point? Claim a harborside park in the morning, not the afternoon. And if you’d rather something quieter and far deeper, Japan at the turn of the year is something else entirely: temple bells rung 108 times on New Year’s Eve, shrines packed for the year’s first visit, a stillness you won’t expect from a country that loud the rest of the time.
Wherever you land, the same small truth holds for all of it: December punishes the last-minute and rewards the planner. Pick your camp, book earlier than feels reasonable, read the weather honestly and it quietly becomes the best travel month of the year. I’d say it already is.