It’s the season of good will to all men, roughly translated as major family time that you’re not getting out of. Time to sit around the fire, playing board games and have deep and meaningful conversations about everything that’s happened over the last twelve months, precisely the last time when Trivial Pursuit came out of the cupboard. Some people love Christmas, some people hate it, so we thought we’d look at some places to escape or embrace those Christmas traditions, and whether now is the time to take a little break to somewhere infinitely more exciting.
As Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of the phenomenally successful “Lonely Planet” series argues, as students, this is the most exciting time in your life to travel: “I still like that idea of [being] young, going off on a first trip, changing your mind forever. That’s still something that really appeals to me. Young people are in many ways pioneers, they’re doing things that later on would be too uncomfortable for them”.
Convincing enough, but most people spend their time and money travelling over the twelve weeks of the Summer vac. So is there any case for going away at Christmas, when prices and gimmicks are hiked up to the max? I asked Tony about the pros and cons of visiting places at peak times: “I think there’s very good reasons why there are peak times. But in some places, it’s so overpowered, so if you can, find things that are just a little bit off peak. You go to France in August, and every Frenchman is on holiday, you can’t find a place on the beach. But you go just one month away from it and suddenly the crowds have disappeared.” It’s true that avoiding “wall-to-wall crowds” is probably a positive thing, but the advantages of long university holidays, starting well before the school holidays break up, mean that we can just about avoid the absolute peak time, as well as getting all the perks of the winter season. After all, there’s no substitute for the sparkly lights and Christmas trees in Brussels or Paris.
When I contacted the STA travel press office, they were more than happy to ream off a number of festive destinations with all the promises of crisp snow and warm food: “Scotland is amazing at Christmas as it’s cold, crisp and often snow covered. Paris is indulgent and luxurious – freezing cold in the winter – and perfect for feasting and winter festivities. And Amsterdam, being one of the party capitals of Europe, is the ideal place to spend New Year.” Add to that their special discounts for students, package deals and off-peak rates, and that traditional Christmas abroad is looking all the more enticing.
So it’s possible to do this holiday perhaps cheaper than originally expected. A further few clicks on the Internet, and I’ve found, surely the ultimate Christmas location: the Santa Claus village in Rovaniemi, Lapland. I’m reliably informed of it’s history by the website, which says that “about a hundred years ago, a passer-by started spreading the word about Ear Mountain and the existence of its inhabitants. Santa wanted to safeguard the tranquillity of his secret hiding place and came up with a superb idea that also allowed him to meet people who love Christmas and his many friends who come to greet him.” Wasn’t that clever of Santa? I don’t think its me being overly cynical to suggest that perhaps this isn’t entirely true. It’s not that I don’t want to believe it, it was a very sad day indeed when my Mum told me Father Christmas didn’t exist. But can you escape the fact that most Christmas activities are just put on for tourists?
Wheeler’s view on this is clear and pragmatic: “Look, they are put on for tourists. But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.” Enjoyment should be the most important criteria, and those traditional destinations are often the very best for that warm festive feeling, “go somewhere like New York, and Christmas is one of the best times of year. The place feels like Christmas, there’s unusual snowfall as well, which is even better”.
Yet the man himself, Wheeler not Santa, likes to spend his Christmasses in Australia, where his family are very much of the view that “Christmas should be summer”: “it’s entirely different what people expect. When do you go skiing? You go skiing in August? That’s the time you go skiing! But I like it either way, I’m very happy with Christmas being in the middle of summer, but I’m equally happy if I flip it around sometimes, and have a winter Christmas.”
But there’s a good reason to be somewhere entirely different for the 25th Decemeber. Whether coming from a tradition of sand or snow, Christmas is always an illuminating time to be elsewhere from the familiar according to Wheeler: “I rather like being in weird and wonderful places at strange times. I’ve had Christmas in Burma once, which was very strange, I had Christmas in Khat Man Du once, and it still is a little bit Christmassy. The mountains are covered in snow, it’s cold and chilly. Quite a few places try to put on something for the tourists there. Khat Man Du was a good place at Christmas.”
It’s interesting talking to the founder of the most successful guidebook series about peak and off-peak, popular and unusual destinations, as he’s probably personally contributed considerably to many of them being so. If a restaurant is mentioned in a Lonely Planet guidebook, it will be swamped with visitors, flouncing the competition through the sole merit of being printed within that hallowed blue cover.
Wheeler admits this is “a concern, no question. One of the things we’ve learnt over the years is to be cautious about places where we have too much influence. If we do a book about New York, London, Sydney or Paris, if we say “this restaurant is really good”, or “this restaurant is really bad”, its a factor, but it’s not an overwhelming factor. But there are some places in the world, where we have a disproportionate influence. You go to Vietnam, and the majority of people are going to be using our Vietnam guide, so we have to be really cautious of how we treat places there, because you can make or you can break places. We’ve learnt over the years to use our influence carefully, when it needs to be used carefully.”
But although these writers have a great deal of influence, the nature of their influence is changing thanks to the Internet. I asked Wheeler about how he thought online forums were changing the nature of the guidebook: “I think these days people are looking for information in all sorts of different ways. Print isn’t dying, print is as popular as ever, it’s just that it’s not always on paper. We’re reading more than we ever did. We’re having to send our writers out to research things, not really knowing how it’s going to end up. They’re researching things which may end up on the website, may end up on an iPhone or iPad or in a book.”
The Internet and technology has functioned to raise our expectations of information, “What we’re seeing at the moment is with the latest digital phones and smart phones you can do so much more. You have that advantage of things you can do digitally which you can’t do with a guidebook. We used to send the writers out and say “get us a good restaurant”. Then we had to say, “here’s a good restaurant, and here’s the website for it”, now we have to say “what’s the latitude and longitudes of it, pinpoint the position of it.” That’s becoming what you have to do these days.”
So Tony Wheeler and the Lonely Planet attempt to raise the standard of travel around the globe, whatever the time of year. But, crucially, and perhaps surprisingly, there is very little pretension surrounding him. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have met a snotty Lonely Planet carrier who’s out to find “the real, local experience”, but this is not Tony himself: “If it’s authentic, and you want that element about it, then that’s great. But I’m not particularly worried about authenticity”.
And this is our ultimate point. Christmas is so marketable, it’s not going to be ignored by half-savvy businessmen. But that doesn’t mean we should dismiss it either. “I’ve been to lots of places which have no interest in Christmas, it’s not one of their holidays at all, and with tourists there, they’ll do something for Christmas with that. It’s more fun being there at the time of a local holiday, and jumping into that, doing something you haven’t experienced before, but hey, there’s nothing wrong with our holidays as well.”
