The best Christmas vacations in the U.S.

If The Sound of Music is part of your holiday ritual, you’ll want to spend Christmas in Stowe because after Maria, Captain and the children crossed the Alps at the end of the movie, they emigrated here. Stay at their Trapp Family Lodge, built to look Austrian and set on 2,500 beautiful acres. Ski out the front door, catch a sleigh ride, snowshoe out to the sugar house for a tour of where maple syrup is created, and enjoy memorabilia on display – you may even see a Trapp grandchild leading the history tour. On Christmas Eve, family members sing with guests. It’s also home to Vermont’s largest brewery, von Trapp Brewing, and 10 different themed Christmas trees are decorated around the property. Stowe itself is charming, with a children’s lantern parade, a holiday bazaar and a free outdoor skating rink. A red gondola takes you to the top of the mountain for epic skiing and snowboarding.

The main draw in Jefferson is the adorable Santa’s Village, which is open Saturdays and select Sundays through the fall and every weekend in December until the 22nd when it closes for the season. This themed amusement park offers pure joy for young and young-at-heart all year, including locating elf statues throughout the park, feeding actual reindeer, and sliding down the Yule Log Flume ride. Lodge at the fancy Omni Mount Washington Resort nearby where presidents have stayed, with its spectacular White Mountain views and access to 60 miles of cross-country ski trails and plenty of alpine skiing and riding. Finally, ride the Cog Railway, which operates even in winter, to create that unforgettable memory.

There’s a reason Hallmark movies are often set in small towns; these are the places where celebrating is off the (stocking) hook. In McAdenville, known as Christmas Town USA, you can walk or drive through an incredible lighting phenomenon: evergreen trees around a lake are draped with lights, the 1883 bell tower gleams, more than 100 homes are decorated to the hilt, and an elementary school student each year gets to turn on the lights at the Tree Lighting Ceremony. Another important component is the Yule Log Ceremony, in place since 1949, where children pull the yule log through town on a sled—scrambling to get a hold of the finite rope—then it’s ignited at an open fireplace to start the festivities.

The splendor of this national park blanketed in snow cannot be overstated. From skating under the graceful swoop of Half Dome, to taking a sleigh ride or just turning in a circle in dazed disbelief at the views, Yosemite is worth the trip. Plus, Badger Pass Ski Area is the oldest downhill ski area in the state. Although many of Yosemite’s lodges offer special holiday treatment, we have to recommend the Ahwahnee (there’s even a Thomas Kinkade painting called "Christmas at the Ahwahnee") because of its dramatic setting and its incredible Bracebridge Dinner (a five-star "merry old England" performance/feast). After a long hiatus due to refurbishment, the Bracebridge Dinner is back in 2024 for selected evenings from December 10 to 23. Photographer Ansel Adams was the first director of the dinner and even performed in it!

This isn’t the only town named Santa Claus, but we love what they offer here. Kids can go into the town’s original post office to write letters to Santa which will be answered by elves, in a tradition that goes back more than 100 years. Take pony rides through Santa’s Stables, visit the Santa Claus Museum and Village, Instagram yourself by the 22-foot statue of Santa, and, of course, stop in at Santa’s Candy Castle for a sweet tooth treat. The village isn’t far from President Abe Lincoln’s boyhood home, where you can walk through 13 Lincoln-era replica cabins decorated for the holiday season at the Lincoln Pioneer Village & Museum. And for faster thrills, don’t miss the Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari, a theme park with coasters and other rides.

For Christmas in the city, the kind of montage you see in your head, nothing beats New York. Skating at Rockefeller Center, watching the Radio City Rockettes perform their annual Christmas Spectacular, hovering around the incredible toy displays at FAO Schwartz, seeing the New York City Ballet perform the Nutcracker, being part of the bustle of shoppers amid the glow of lit skyscrapers... it’s just magical. A light drifting of snow and yellow cabs working their way through traffic; maybe it’s stereotypical but it still gets our hearts going like ten lords a'leaping.

Exhilarate in having the national park mainly to yourself and enjoy spectacular weather conditions that may create cloud inversions, where clouds rest in the canyon below the rim. Snow may be present for incredible sunrises, and there’s even a Polar Express train ride put on by the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel. The El Tovar Hotel offers a luxurious Christmas Day meal so you don’t have to cook, or you can cross-country ski through the pine forest, a true winter wonderland. The North Rim is closed to car traffic during this season, but you can be intrepid and hike there from the South Rim for a Christmas memory that will resonate in your head for years.

Ah, the sound of sleighbells... The sound of ‘jingle bells’ as horses pull a sleigh along through the snow arouses all that nostalgia for a Christmas we may have never even experienced! But you can in Manistee, at the Victorian Sleighbell Parade & Old Christmas Weekend, where Belgian draft horses pull an upright 30-foot Christmas tree through the streets. There are bagpipers, carolers, luminaria, reindeer, Victorian bell ringers, a festival of trees, a night parade, lumbering dioramas and hot chestnuts for sale: we’re dazed.

This small community, founded by Danish immigrants in 1911, is filled with Danish architecture, a windmill, and bakeries. Solvang makes a big fuss over Christmas with its month-long Julefest celebration with a tree lighting and a parade, a citywide hunt for "nisser" (gnomes!), a dramatic Christmas Tree Burn and a candlelight procession. The visitors' bureau says Julefest is like "a walk through a vintage postcard and a Hallmark movie simultaneously."

Here, you can tour the historic Granger Homestead and Carriage Museum, decked out for a Victorian Christmas, with the Festival of Trees: tons of Christmas trees inside decorated by different civic groups. Outside, the Christkindl Market has heated tents with more than 100 booths of traditional crafts and goods. You can eat traditional German foods like strudel, schnitzel and the typical fair food. Our favorite is the tent where you can sit and warm your hands with a piping mug of Gideon’s Grog, a version of German glühwein, made with Sangria and spices, then mulled (you get to keep the branded mug), while a festive red trolley shuttles people from the parking lots to the action. Many other cities offer the traditional German Christkindl Markets, but this one is said to be one of the best in the U.S.

With a lake beach for wading and a walkable historic downtown, the affordable town of Kissimmee is just 10 miles from a certain ‘merriest place on earth,’ but has its own draw. The Ice! Featuring Elf! experience at the Gaylord Palms Resort & Convention Center is a wonderland of 2 million pounds of carved ice sculptures and slides. This year’s theme is Elf, showcasing the elf himself, Snow Flow Mountain and a TwElf Days of Christmas Scavenger Hunt. To enter the frosty nine-degree environment, you’ll don a provided blue parka (because who’ll bring a winter coat to Florida?) to zip down the two-story-tall solid ice slide and walk through 20,000 feet of 10 immersive scenes. The hotel has a huge Christmas tree and lighting display, while in Kissimmee itself, there’s a Christkindlmarkt and a parade for the downtown Festival of Lights. At Sunset Walk entertainment district, there’s a new Pearl Express Train Tour.

Check out the Christmas City of the North Parade at night with festive lights ablaze, then take a 30-minute ride on the Christmas City Express Train with hot cocoa and good cheer. The historic Glensheen estate, built with last-century iron mining money, is dressed for the holidays. The biggest draw, however, is the Bentleyville Tour of Lights, billed as "America’s largest free walk-through lighting display." Walk through the beautiful lights, sit and roast a marshmallow at a bonfire and get a free knit cap and cookies after visiting Santa if you can convince anyone you are 10 and under.

Each year, Cleveland kicks off festivities with WinterLand (ice skating, pop-up stores, food trucks, fireworks, carriage rides) and tree lighting. The zoo has a holiday lights display, and drive-through light displays throughout the city. But the thing we love most is the house used in the movie A Christmas Story. Tour the decorated home (crawl under the sink for a glass of milk?) and stop across the street for a museum where costumes and paraphernalia are displayed. You can even spend the night if you wish. We sure hope Ralphie gets that official Red Ryder carbine action two-hundred shot range model air rifle (breathe)!

The Rose City is an activities-packed destination year-round, and come Christmas, that's no different. The sheer number of events that will get you in the holiday spirit is impressive. Looking to shop local? Stop by Crafty Wonderland, the city's biggest arts and craft market, or check out the Wild Arts Festival, an art show and book fair. Family-friendly activities abound, from ZooLights to the Christmas Festival of Lights, featuring awe-inspiring light displays and more than 150 indoor concerts throughout the month to the annual Christmas Ships Parade, where festively decorated yachts and sailboats light up the Columbia and Willamette Rivers. One thing's for sure: a Christmas vacation to Portland will never leave you wondering how to fill an itinerary. 

Santa Fe starts its Christmas season off with a Plaza Lighting Ceremony the day after Thanksgiving, upon the signal from Santa and Mrs. Claus seated atop the town's vintage fire truck. The city's Pro Musica baroque ensemble will perform the “Bach Festival, a Baroque Christmas” in the New Mexico Museum of Art. But the true standout is the Canyon Road Farolito Walk on Christmas Eve, a half-mile stretch closed to cars with hot chocolate stands, food trucks, artists’ booths and thousands of farolitos (Spanish for “little lanterns,” it's Santa Fe’s preferred term for luminarias). The nighttime display is magical and unforgettable.

Festivities begin in San Antonio the day after Thanksgiving with a river parade and the lighting of the River Walk with 100,000 lights at the Annual Ford Holiday River Parade. Throughout the season, enjoy caroling on weekends from river boats, ice skating at historic Travis Park, Christmas markets, a luminaria-lined river and Holidays on Houston Street, a multi-day holiday market along five blocks of Houston Street. There’s also a fun run, community dinner, events at the Alamo and the annual La Gran Tamalada, a festival of tamale-making with Pancho Claus and realistic “snow.”

Many of us associate Christmas with the movie It’s a Wonderful Life . . . and spending Christmas in the town which inspired it may help you give an angel its wings. That’s Seneca Falls, the “real Bedford Falls,” located in the heart of the Finger Lakes region. It’s also the birthplace of American feminism. Home to the It’s a Wonderful Life Museum, the town hosts a yearly December festival to honor the film and spread Christmas cheer. The Bridge Street Bridge may not be the exact one from the movie, but it certainly resembles it.