Every autumn, somebody writes to ask me a version of the same question, looking for an actual experience from an actual educator, not the internet.
If we were going to go somewhere for Christmas, where should we actually go?
Not which country has the prettiest traditions, which is a question anybody can answer from an armchair with their phone. The real question has a plane ticket attached to it, and school holidays, and a grandmother who will be disappointed, and a budget that has already been spent twice. This question needs an answer from people who have actually spent December somewhere other than home, in the cold, with the children, (and perhaps, when something went wrong, as is the case with all travel).
Which, happily, is what we have! Our writers have spent Christmas in Vienna, Prague, Nairobi, Montenegro, Bermuda, Newfoundland, Stratford Ontario, Turkey, Scotland, and Panama, and they came back and shared it here with our readers.
So here is where to go, what it is actually like when you get there, and a few honest words about the ones that are harder than they look. Sixteen places, and a Wandering Educators writer has actually spent December in every one of them.
Sixteen places, one December
First, the part the Christmas listicles leave out
Traveling at Christmas is not traveling in October with lights on. Three things change, and all three are learning before you plan your travels.
Things close. In much of Catholic and Orthodox Europe, December 25 and 26 shut down almost completely, and in some places, so do January 1 and January 6. Worse, the markets you flew for may well be packed up before Christmas Day even arrives. Nuremberg's closes at two in the afternoon on Christmas Eve - for the season! If the market is the reason for the trip, go in early December and go home for the holiday itself. (This is the single most common way people get this trip wrong, and it is entirely avoidable.)
The travel days are brutal. December 23, 26, and 27 are the worst days of the year to be in an airport or on a motorway, and our own writer's advice about Boxing Day was simply to stay where you are. Arrive early, leave late, and spend the 26th somewhere with a fire and a book. (Nobody has ever regretted this advice. Nobody!)
And you will miss people. This is the real one, and our article on Christmas far from home highlights why. Going somewhere wonderful for Christmas means not being in your own kitchen at midnight, and it is worth deciding in advance that the trade is one you actually want. (Some years it is. Some years it very much is not, and that is useful to know in October rather than on December 24.)
Tip: if this is your first Christmas away from home, pick somewhere the holiday is celebrated loudly and publicly. An empty hotel in a country that does not mark the day at all is the loneliest version of this plan.
Europe, where the season runs a whole month long
Vienna is the one I would send a first-timer to without hesitating for a second. The city keeps around twenty markets going at once, which means you are never more than a tram ride from the next one, and the whole center is walkable in weather that would ruin a driving trip. The Rathausplatz market runs from November 13 to December 26, 2026, open daily until ten at night, closing at half past six on Christmas Eve. Our writer's taste of a Viennese Christmas is the piece to read first, and it is mostly about food, as it should be. Punsch, Maroni roasting in paper cones, Vanillekipferl still warm. Vienna also happens to be a tremendous city for history the other eleven months of the year, so the trip survives three days of rain without anybody crying. (Mostly.)
Nuremberg is the market people mean when they say German Christmas market. The city's own 2026 calendar puts the Christkindlesmarkt at November 27 through December 24, opening with a prologue spoken by the Nuremberg Christkind, who is elected to a two-year term by the people of the city. An elected Christkind! I find this completely delightful and I think about it more often than is reasonable. Our writer's German Christmas market experience covers what it is like standing in it, and if you are still choosing between cities, start with our guide to experiencing the magic of European Christmas markets, which is the strategic version of this decision and will save you an argument in a hotel lobby.
The Czech Republic is my pick for the traveler who has already done Germany and Austria and wants the holiday to feel genuinely unfamiliar. A carp swimming in the bathtub for days before dinner. A meal that waits for the first star to appear. A golden pig, if you can fast long enough to see one. Our piece on five surprising Czech Christmas celebrations is one of the strongest things in our entire holiday archive, and it will reset your sense of what Christmas even is. (The carp. The CARP. Read it!)
Mainau Island, in Lake Constance, is the most understated recommendation on this list and the one that surprises people most. A flower island in winter sounds like a scheduling error until you are standing on it. Our writer called it winter magic, and for a family that wants Germany without the crush of a major market city, this is the alternative nobody tells you about. (Lake Constance in December! Who knew?)
Scotland gives you a whole season rather than a single day, because the real celebration here is Hogmanay at the far end of this season, which is a New Year's Eve that makes everybody else's look underpowered. In between, there are castles keeping the old traditions, and our collection of Scotland's top musicians sharing a Christmas song and the story behind it is what to put on while you plan. There is absolutely nothing like this season in the Highlands, a warm fire, and the essence of Scotland in pubs, decor, camaraderie, and nature at its winter best.
Montenegro, for a different holiday calendar. Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7, which means you can have a Western Christmas at home with everybody who expects you, fly out after New Year when the fares have become sane again, and have a second Christmas in a country where the oak branch and the badnjak fire are more important than the tree. If your school holidays run into January, this is the single most underused idea on this page.
Demre, Turkey, because this is where Saint Nicholas actually lived, worked, and was buried, and almost nobody goes. Our piece on Demre being more than Santa Claus is short, strange, and wonderful, and it is a very good thing to hand a child who has started asking the hard questions. The answer turns out to be better than the myth, which is rarely how that goes. (A real man, a real town, real generosity. Still there.) Go for the feast day on December 6th.
this is the actual reason to go
Farther afield, where Christmas looks nothing like the catalogue
Nairobi. Christmas in the heat, with nyama choma rather than goose, and a city that half empties as people travel upcountry to their families. Our writer's Christmas hot spots in Nairobi is the kind of piece almost nobody bothers to write, and it is a useful corrective for any child who has absorbed the idea that December means snow. (Most of the world's Christians spend this holiday warm. The snow is a marketing decision.)
Bermuda has the best single holiday event I know of that an American family can reach in about two hours of flying. St. George's Christmas Walkabout turns the oldest continuously inhabited English town in the New World into a street party, and we have covered the island twice: once for the Walkabout itself, and once for the sights, sounds, and smells of a Bermudian Christmas, which is the one with the cassava pie in it. Go for the cassava pie. Stay for the Walkabout!
Newfoundland is the entry I most strongly suggest. Mummering means disguising yourself past all recognition, knocking on a neighbor's door, and refusing to speak in your own voice until they guess who you are. It runs through the twelve days of Christmas. The Mummers Festival, which is run by Newfoundlanders rather than by a tourist board, is careful to say that the tradition has changed rather than disappeared, and that "traditions like these seem to ebb and flow," which is a more honest account than the tidy revival story outsiders prefer to tell. Our review of a wonderful children's book, A Moose Goes a-Mummering, is short and a complete joy. St. John's in December is cold, bright, musical, and unlike anywhere else in North America. (I love that city in every season, and recommend everyone go. EVERYONE.)
Panama, for the version of this where things go wrong and the trip turns out better for it. Lost and found in Panama on Christmas Eve is not a destination guide at all. It is what actually happens when you travel at Christmas, and I would read it before booking anything, as a kind of inoculation against your own plans.
most of the world spends this holiday warm
Close to home, which is a real answer and not a consolation prize
Most families cannot fly in December, most years. Some of the best holiday travel we have ever covered is a two-hour drive.
New York City is the obvious one and it earns the obviousness. Our guide to what to include in a New York Christmas is recent and practical, which matters enormously in a city where the gap between a wonderful day and a miserable one is almost entirely logistics. (Book the thing. Book it now. The Rockettes do not wait for you.)
Washington, DC, for a White House Christmas, which is a genuine piece of American ritual and free to see from the outside even in the years when the tickets are long gone.
Stratford, Ontario, which is one of my favorite places on this earth in any season, and which in December runs a Christmas trail through the shops that is about as civilized as a holiday gets. We keep covering it because we love it so. More info on the Christmas Trail that marks the start of the season, the Victorian Christmas Trail, and the Chocolate trail featuring local businesses. The extra bonus is that your holiday gift list will be taken care of by shopping this town, and loading up at Rheo Thompson chocolates (get plenty for yourself, of course!).
Grand Rapids, Michigan. Frederik Meijer Gardens mounts Christmas and Holiday Traditions Around the World every single year, with dozens of trees each decorated for a different country, and it is the best way I know to show a child what this entire article is about without leaving the state. We have been behind the scenes of how the exhibit gets built, written up the traditions on display, ridden the railway garden, and prescribed the whole place as the cure for holiday stress. Four times! It is that good. While we go to MG year-round, there's something special about the global trees, the inundation of pointsettia, the very magic of celebration and joy in the air. Our daughter has had favorites over the years, ranging from rapidly heading toward the trains to poking around the trees of the countries she was obsessed with each year. It truly has something for everyone, and so much fascinating, colorful displays to see and remember. Extra bonus for the days when it is snowing outside, fat flakes falling slowly while inside, warmth and color and joy reign.
Victoria, British Columbia, where Christmas comes to the Royal BC Museum, for a family that wants the season indoors, warm, and educational (which in a Pacific Northwest December is not a small consideration).
And the Great Lakes, for a story rather than a destination. The Rouse Simmons, the Christmas Tree Ship, went down in Lake Michigan in 1912 carrying trees to Chicago. It is one of the most moving things we have ever published, and it is a piece of Christmas history most Americans have never heard.
the whole world’s Christmas, one building, no passport
If you are not going anywhere this year
Most of us are not, most years, and the season is not diminished by it.
There is Celtic Christmas music, and a collection of music for the winter solstice for anyone whose December is more about the dark than the doctrine. There are recipes for Italian Christmas chocolate and nut cake and pinwheel cookies for Santa, both of which a child can make quite happily, which is the entire fun of baking with children (this is where core memories are made).
And if what you want is the traditions rather than the destinations, I HIGHLY recommend reading Stasia Lopez on cultural holidays, from St. Nicholas to La Befana. Four thousand words written from inside her own Greek and Italian-American family, and the best thing on this site about what these days actually mean to the people who keep them.
creativity AND joy
For teachers, because December in a classroom is its own problem
Teaching Christmas in a room where not every child celebrates it takes more care than a craft and a song, and we have two practical pieces on exactly that: celebrating Christmas in the ESL classroom and Christmas classroom ideas for ESL teachers.
The principle underneath both: teach it as one tradition among many, say plainly whose tradition it is, and never ask a child to perform their family's holiday for the class. A child who volunteers is a gift. A child who is asked usually cannot say no, and will not tell you that.
So where should you actually go?
If you want the full European Christmas and you have never done it, Vienna, and look at flights this week because they will not get cheaper between now and December.
If you want it to feel strange and new, Prague.
If your holidays run into January, Montenegro, and have two Christmases like a QUITE celebratory person.
If you want the best single day with children, Bermuda, for the Walkabout.
If you want the one nobody else will have done, Newfoundland, and go in disguise.
And if you are staying put this year, Grand Rapids, where somebody has already gone to the enormous trouble of assembling the whole world's Christmas inside one building.
Pick one. Put it in the calendar before the end of this week, because the whole difference between a trip that happens and a trip you talk about is when the planning actually starts.
More from Wandering Educators on Christmas and holiday travel
Also worth your time:
- Luxury Christmas Shopping in the Piccadilly Arcades
- Celebrating Christmas at Disney: What to Expect
- Christmas at the Disney Parks
- Music: Holiday Favorites
- Holiday Music from the Highlands to the Blue Ridge
Sources for the dates and details in this article
- Vienna Tourist Board, vienna.info, Viennese Christmas Market on Rathausplatz, 2026 dates and opening hours.
- City of Nuremberg, nuernberg.de, Christkindlesmarkt 2026 outlook, opening date, closing times, and the election of the Christkind.
- Mummers Festival, Newfoundland and Labrador, on mummering traditions.
Market and event dates change every single year. These were checked on October 25, 2026, and should be re-verified each autumn before you book anything.
Jessie Voigts is the founder and publisher of Wandering Educators. She has a PhD in International Education, has lived and worked in Japan and London, and traveled around the world. She is constantly looking for ways to increase intercultural understanding, and is passionate about study abroad and international education.