The Best Places to Spend Christmas
Ten places that do Christmas their own way — a peace declared from a balcony since the Middle Ages, radishes carved into nativity scenes, and fried chicken booked weeks ahead in Tokyo.
Most "best Christmas" lists are a ranking of markets selling the same mulled wine. The better reason to travel for Christmas is a custom you can't get at home, and these ten each have one. They run roughly in calendar order, from markets that open in mid-November to two things that only happen on the 23rd and 24th.
The markets come first. Budapest's Advent Bazilika fills the square in front of St Stephen's Basilica from 13 November 2026 to 1 January, with a light show projected onto the basilica's front every evening; a European Best Destinations reader poll named it Europe's most beautiful Christmas market for 2026. Kitzbühel's Advent market runs through the old town and the Stadtpark from 18 November to 27 December, with St Nicholas arriving on 6 December. Quebec City's German Christmas Market spreads across five free sites inside the walled old town from 19 November to 23 December. Barcelona's Fira de Santa Llúcia, which began as a fair for the saint's feast day on 13 December, sets up around the cathedral from late November until the 23rd, selling nativity figures — the squatting caganer among them — and the Tió, the Catalan log that "poops" presents.
New York's is a tree. Construction workers at Rockefeller Center put up a 20-foot balsam fir in 1931, decorated with paper garlands and cranberries; the first official tree followed in 1933, and the skating rink below it in 1936. The lighting falls in early December — expected on Wednesday 2 December this year, though not yet confirmed. Naples needs no date at all: on Via San Gregorio Armeno, workshops make figures for the Neapolitan presepe, the nativity scene, all year round, and the street is busiest in December.
Then the two nights. On 23 December Oaxaca holds the Noche de Rábanos in its zócalo: a radish-carving competition the city's municipal president announced in 1897, with radishes grown oversized for it and carved into nativity scenes, saints and politics. At noon on 24 December, Turku declares Christmas Peace from the balcony of the Brinkkala Mansion on the Old Great Square — a declaration traced back to the 1300s, read from that balcony since 1886, in Finnish and Swedish, to crowds of 10,000 to 18,000.
Tokyo's tradition is newer and odder: a 1974 KFC campaign, Kurisumasu ni wa Kentakkii, "Kentucky for Christmas", turned fried chicken into the Christmas Eve meal across Japan. Christmas Eve is KFC's busiest day of the year there, and orders open weeks in advance. Rovaniemi ends the list because it never closes. Santa Claus Village sits on the Arctic Circle a few kilometres outside the city and has been open every day of the year since 1985, with a post office that has received millions of letters from around the world.
Budapest
A city that turned its own condemned buildings into its best nightlife rather than tearing them down.
Kitzbühel
A medieval walled town that happens to host the hardest downhill race in skiing, and still functions as a town in summer.
Quebec City
Walled, French-speaking, and cooking a heavier, richer table than the rest of Canada.
Barcelona
Gaudí's city, but the good tapas bars are the ones without a queue, tucked into Gràcia's residential streets.
New York City
The institutions outlast the trends, and most of them are older than anyone eating there.
Naples
Loud, chaotic, and the reason pizza exists — better eaten standing up than at a table with a view.
Oaxaca
Seven moles, a market that smells of chocolate and chillies, and mezcal from people who will show you the still.
Turku
Finland's oldest city, quieter and slower than Helsinki, built along the Aura river.
Tokyo
Shimokitazawa's back streets hold more good counters than the guidebook districts ever will.
Rovaniemi
The official hometown of Santa Claus, and the practical gateway to Finnish Lapland's aurora season.