The lights go on in late November. Then it all sells out.
Which Dyker Heights bus gets you off the bus. What a reindeer run out of Rovaniemi costs. Whether Strasbourg or Vienna is the better four days of Advent. Reviews of the Christmas and New Year trips you can actually book.
Four December nights worth building a whole trip around.
A top deck under the angel lights, a Brooklyn block that competes with itself, the Arctic Circle, and a baroque church on New Year’s Eve. What each costs, and what the people who went say.
01The London lights runChristmas Lights Bus Tour With Live GuideAn open-top loop through Regent Street, Oxford Street and Covent Garden after dark. More people book this than any other festive trip on the site.
02The Brooklyn lawns4-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus TourDyker Heights is a residential neighbourhood in an arms race with itself. The bus saves you an hour on the subway at each end and runs after dark, which is the point.
03The Arctic Circle dayReindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageReindeer, huskies and Santa Claus Village in one run out of Rovaniemi. The single booking a Lapland trip hangs off.
04New Year in ViennaChristmas & New Year’s Concert in St. Peter’s ChurchStrings and brass in St Peter’s, a few doors off the Graben. The concert fills before the hotels do.
Four Christmas bookings the season closes on you.
This is a six-week trade. The huts come down on the 24th, one night carries the whole of New Year, and the Arctic runs on a two-hour day. Four things to sort before the flights.
- 01Christmas Markets Food Tour in MunichMost European markets open in the last days of November and pack up on the 23rd or 24th. Turn up between Christmas and New Year and you are looking at empty scaffolding.
- 02Christmas & New Year’s Concert in St. Peter’s ChurchOne night, one set of seats. Countdown cruises, rooftop tables and gala dinners are the first thing gone in any city that does fireworks properly.
- 034-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus TourThe Brooklyn lawns switch on around Thanksgiving and go dark in the first week of January. Seats for the fortnight either side of Christmas go weeks ahead.
- 04Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus VillageLapland sells its Christmas week a year out. Sleighs and Santa meetings are timed slots on a short winter day, so there are only so many of them.
Six cities that do December properly.
Angel lights hung over the traffic, wooden huts under a Gothic spire, an Arctic village with its own post office, and a Brooklyn block treating the whole thing as a competition. Six places, and the best night out in each.
America does Christmas loud: a Brooklyn block, an Ozark theatre town, a colonial street lit by candle.
Three completely different American Decembers. What it costs to get on each one, and the whole country underneath.
The Christmas trips more people book than anything else.
Every festive trip we have reviewed →Lights buses, reindeer runs and market cruises, in the order travellers put money down on them, and what earns each one its slot.
1
Christmas Lights Bus Tour With Live Guide
See Regent Street, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, the London Eye, and Big Ben on a 60 to 90 minute evening bus tour. A live English-speaking guide such as Shaun, Emma, or Ethan adds London history, jokes, and photo tips. Choose an open-top view or the warmer lower deck.
From · $33
Read our review →
2
4-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus Tour
from $63
3
Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village
from $221
4
London by Night Bus Tour with Christmas Lights and Live Guide
from $41
5
Tootbus Open-Top Christmas Bus Tour
from $46
6
Dyker Heights Christmas Lights & Skyline View Bus Tour
from $69
7
London Christmas Lights Tour by Vintage Bus Open Top
from $37
8
Snowman World Entry Ticket in Santa Claus Village
from $41
Christmas lights tours: the switch-on is the whole show.
A city changes at four in the afternoon in December. Open decks for the long boulevards, walking loops for the lanes, and one Brooklyn neighbourhood that has turned domestic wattage into a sport.
The market is the reason the trip has a date on it.
Wooden huts, a ceramic mug you pay a deposit on, and a smell of cloves that carries three streets. Dresden, Vienna, Strasbourg and Prague all claim an oldest-market title; the real difference is what goes in the mug and how early the shutters come down.
Rovaniemi is the Arctic Circle with a working postmark.
Two hours of blue daylight, then floodlights on snow. Reindeer pull, huskies refuse to stop, and the post office beside the painted Circle line answers letters addressed to Santa Claus. Christmas week goes a year ahead; the rest of the winter is quieter and cheaper.
Every Rovaniemi trip →London strings the lights over the traffic and charges nothing to look up.
Regent Street, Oxford Street, Carnaby and Covent Garden switch on in early November and stay lit past Twelfth Night. What you pay for is the vantage: a top deck above the bus roofs, or a walk that ends somewhere warm with a glass in it.
- 1Christmas Lights Bus Tour With Live Guidefrom $33
- 2London by Night Bus Tour with Christmas Lights and Live Guidefrom $41
- 3London Christmas Lights Tour by Vintage Bus Open Topfrom $37
What a December night out actually costs.
Every festive trip on the site, grouped by price. A good many of the best ones come in under what you will spend on mulled wine afterwards.
Market walks, mulled-wine boats, lights loops on foot and an hour on an open top deck.
The full evening: dinner cruises, Advent concerts, Dyker Heights by bus, the reindeer farms.
Private guides, Arctic days with huskies and Santa, and the New Year tables with the fireworks in the window.
Three things that only exist for six weeks a year.
Fairy lights are everywhere and cost nothing to look at. A neighbourhood arms race in Brooklyn, a mug you are expected to give back, and a post office on the Arctic Circle are not.
The Dyker Heights Lawns
A few families on the streets around 84th and 13th started outdoing each other in the 1980s and the neighbourhood never stopped. Animatronic soldiers, twelve-foot nutcrackers, front gardens rented out to professional installers for the season. It runs from around Thanksgiving to the first week of January, it is free to walk, and it is a long cold way from the nearest subway, which is why the buses exist.
- 1Christmas Lights Bus Tour With Live Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 5,410 reviews
- 24-Hour Dyker Heights Holiday Lights Bus Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,426 reviews
- 3London by Night Bus Tour with Christmas Lights and Live Guide★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,040 reviews
Glühwein and the Pfand
German and Austrian markets pour hot spiced wine into a proper ceramic mug and charge a deposit on it, usually three or four euros. Hand the mug back at any stall and you get the money; keep it and you have a souvenir with the town and the year fired into the glaze. The design changes annually, and there are people who plan a whole route around collecting them.
- 1Mulled Wine Motorboat Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 514 reviews
- 2Sightseeing Boat Tour with Mulled Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 3.6 · 202 reviews
- 3Unlimited Mulled Wine Cruise★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 183 reviews
Santa Claus Village
The line of the Arctic Circle is painted across the yard at Rovaniemi and lit up after dark, and the post office beside it handles letters from every country there is. Everything runs to a timetable because the daylight does not last: the reindeer first, then the meeting, then the sleigh, and it is dark by two in the afternoon.
- 1Reindeer, Huskies & Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 2,334 reviews
- 2Snowman World Entry Ticket in Santa Claus Village★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 1,081 reviews
- 3Santa Claus Village and Arctic Circle★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 355 reviews
The market closes at eight. The evening does not.
Almost every European Christmas market pulls its shutters somewhere between seven and nine, which leaves the best part of a winter night unbooked. The answer is indoors and sitting down: brass and strings in a baroque church, a dinner boat with the city lit from the water, a cellar with something hot in it.
By city — where the lights are on
By kind of night — market, lights, sleigh or countdown
Strasbourg, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague: the market run people do in one December week.
Strasbourg
Munich
DresdenThe newest Christmas and New Year reviews.
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Goðafoss Waterfall, Santa Claus House and Forest Lagoon
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From Santiago: Christmas Lights of Vigo And Pontevedra
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Full day: Reindeer Farm, Santa Claus Village & Husky Park
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From Banff: Winter Wonderland; Lake Louise & Johnston Canyon
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Frankfurt: Christmas Market & Old Town Tour 60 min-daily 16:00-in German
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