Christmas on Italy's warmer coasts

Italy does not celebrate one Christmas so much as several, depending on which part of the country you find yourself in. The presepe, the nativity crib scene, is taken seriously almost everywhere, with elaborate versions built into shop windows, church porches and town squares from early December, a tradition said to trace back to Saint Francis of Assisi's live nativity in 1223, though the ornate, populated model versions familiar today developed mostly in Naples over the following centuries, where entire streets still specialise in the small handmade figures.

Naples and the towns along its bay take the presepe tradition further than most: Via San Gregorio Armeno, a narrow street in the old city, is lined year-round with workshops producing crib figures ranging from the traditional holy family to, more recently, footballers and politicians rendered in the same careful clay. Further along the coast, in Sorrento and the towns of the Amalfi peninsula, December brings a quieter, calmer version of a coastline that in summer is anything but: the crowds have gone, the sea stays milder than in Britain even in midwinter, and towns strung with lights along their cliffside lanes make for a Christmas walk without the usual argument about whether it is too cold to go outside.

Italian Christmas food traditions vary almost as much by region as the decorations do. Panettone, the tall, domed bread studded with candied fruit, originated in Milan, while pandoro, its plainer star-shaped cousin dusted in vanilla sugar, comes from Verona; both are sold and eaten across the whole country by December, with families and rival relatives sometimes taking a side. The season does not end on the day itself, either: 6th January, the feast of the Epiphany, is marked across Italy with the arrival of La Befana, a broom-riding old woman said to leave sweets for good children and coal, these days usually a dark sugar sweet made to resemble it, for the mischievous.

A gentler climate, not a different season

None of this makes southern Italy a summer holiday in disguise. December on the Sorrento and Amalfi coasts is properly winter, with short days, rain to be expected and evenings cool enough for a coat, but it rarely drops close to freezing, and the towns' orientation towards the sea keeps the worst of any wind at bay. It suits a slower, more contemplative version of Christmas: a walk along the coast road, the cathedral in Amalfi lit for the season, a lunch built around the citrus and seafood the region produces year-round rather than anything seasonal in the British sense.

A Venetian country Christmas, well away from the crowds

Further north, in the flat countryside of the Veneto rather than on Venice's own canals, Christmas takes a different, more domestic shape: country houses and small towns near Pordenone and Padua, decorated for the season without the crush of visitors that fills Venice itself in high summer, and near enough to the city for a day's visit to St Mark's Square without needing to stay there. It is a version of an Italian Christmas built around a single well-chosen base rather than constant movement between sights, which suits December's shorter days and the general instinct, shared by most people at that time of year, to not want to be rushed.

Christmas on the Sorrento coast, similarly, tends to combine a settled stay with day trips to Pompeii, Naples and the smaller towns further along the peninsula, giving the archaeology and the architecture of the region their due alongside the seasonal decoration, rather than treating December purely as a backdrop.

Book early if a specific date matters: December departures to popular coastal towns fill ahead of the season, and the towns themselves, while quieter than in summer, are still busiest in the fortnight either side of the day itself.