After literally months of seeing the shops in the UK fill to the brim with Christmas cards and battling the hordes of present-hungry shoppers, for some the opportunity to get away from it all during the festive season is all too compelling. What better than spending a well-deserved Christmas break in Malaga? With Malaga Airport being only minutes away from the city itself, and the flight only taking around 3 hours from most UK airports, visitors can really make the most of their Christmas break.
As in many other European countries, Christmas in Spain tends to be much less concentrated on commercialism and much more so on religion. The festive season sees the local churches packed to overflowing with locals at all times of the day and night. Most families attend midnight mass on Christmas Eve and it is the Spanish custom for them to get together on this night for a huge family banquet. Although roast lamb or suckling pig are popular favourites for the main course, seafood also figures strongly as part of the Christmas meal. Turron, a nougat made of toasted sweet almonds, and mantecados, made from lard and powdered nuts and appearing in a variety of flavours, are the traditional Christmas sweets and can normally only be found at this time of year.
Just because Christmas is celebrated more for its religious significance than is perhaps demonstrated in the UK, does not mean to say, however, that there is any lack of fun, festivities or Christmas decorations. At the beginning of December, the streets of Malaga are decked out with literally millions of lights and the tall, statuesque forms of cone-shaped Christmas trees are in abundance. Another thing which Malaga really goes in for at Christmas time is poinsettias, and in fact you are likely to find them just about everywhere you look. Every street corner is home to an entire upright column of these deep red plants and they can be seen growing alongside the streets, in the city’s parks and in just about every spare patch of ground. They are even used to sculpt the shape of Christmas trees and you can see these and other flowers, such as bougainvillea, forming part of the many nativity scenes which are constructed throughout the town.
Flights to Malaga at Christmas time are easily available and depart from a number of UK airports, and bargains are normally pretty easy to find.