December by the water
Christmas in San Diego
Christmas here does not look like Christmas anywhere else. It is often warm enough to be on the sand in the morning, half the lights are on boats rather than houses, and the tree at the beach is usually somebody’s surfboard. This is what to book, where to find Santa, and where to drive after dark.
Plan ahead
Book Christmas Day dinner in November, not December
Most of San Diego closes on the 25th. Not just the small places: whole streets of restaurants shut for the day. What stays open is largely hotel dining rooms, because a hotel with guests in it has to feed them, which means you are choosing from a few dozen rooms in the city rather than a few thousand.
Some of those will still take you the same week. Others are gone by the end of November, and wherever you go, the tables with the water go first. There is no reliable way to tell which is which until you ring, so ring early rather than panic later.
And when you do get through, ask for a table with the water. In most of these rooms the view belongs to particular tables rather than to the restaurant, and nobody offers unless you ask.
How to book: use whatever the restaurant’s own site points its reservations button at, usually OpenTable or Resy. Christmas Day menus are often sold there as a prepaid ticket rather than a normal table, so look for an events or tickets link if the date is not showing. Hotel dining rooms are the exception: several of them take holiday bookings only by telephone, through the hotel rather than the restaurant, so ring the main switchboard and ask to be put through.
Christmas Day dinner
Five rooms with a good chance of serving on the day, all of them on or above the water. None of it is a guarantee: ring each one to confirm before you build the day around it.
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Hotel del Coronado
The most Christmassy building in the county, and it knows it: the tree in the lobby is an event of its own. Several dining rooms, usually more than one sitting, and the beach outside if the table runs long.
The water: the ocean is over the dunes rather than under the window in most of the rooms. Worth asking which one you are being booked into.
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The Marine Room
La Jolla, and the most formal room on this page. Check the tide table before you pick a seating time.
The water: against the glass. At a high tide the waves hit the windows and the whole room turns to watch.
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Bali Hai
Shelter Island, and cheerfully unserious in a way the fine-dining rooms are not. A good answer if the table has children and grandparents at the same end of it.
The water: the bay in front, the downtown skyline across it, and after dark the whole thing is lit. Upstairs tables are the ones to ask for.
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Oceana Coastal Kitchen, Catamaran Resort
Five minutes round the bay and the closest thing to walking distance on this page. The relaxed option, and the easiest to get back from if somebody small runs out of afternoon.
The water: Mission Bay, flat and bright, from the window and terrace tables.
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Mister A’s
Twelve floors up in Bankers Hill. The grown-up choice, and the one where the view does the most work after dark.
The water: not on it, but above it: the bay, the bridge and the airport in one window, all of it lit by six o’clock.
If you would rather not
- Chinese food and a film. An actual Christmas tradition and the most reliable one going: Chinese restaurants and cinemas are the two things that are open on the 25th almost everywhere. No booking, no prix fixe, no jacket.
- Cook here. The kitchen is a good one, and the supermarkets take orders for a cooked bird or a prime rib to collect on Christmas Eve, but order it a couple of weeks out. There is a page on where to do the grocery run, and it is worth knowing that on the 25th itself the 7-Eleven on the corner may be the only thing open.
If none of the five works out, there are seven more water-view rooms, with the same notes on which tables actually have the view, on the Thanksgiving page. Most of them serve both holidays. The same warning applies twice over though: being open in November says nothing about being open on the 25th.
Where to find Santa
Roughly in order of how much booking they need. The photo sessions release their slots in November and the good times on the weekends do go.
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Breakfast with Santa, on the bay
The Catamaran, Paradise Point and the Bahia all usually run breakfasts through December, and they are the closest ones to the house. Ticketed, and they sell out earliest of anything here, so this is the one to book first.
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Hotel del Coronado
Santa turns up at the Del through the season, along with the tree, the rink and the lights along the beach front. Half a day out rather than an hour, and worth treating as one.
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The shopping centres
Fashion Valley and Westfield UTC both do the full grotto with timed photo slots you book online. Unromantic, entirely reliable, and the fallback if everything else has gone.
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The parades, for free
Santa rides the last float in the holiday parades below. No ticket, no queue and no photographer, but also no thirty-dollar print, and small children generally do not mind which Santa it was.
Tree lightings and parades
Almost all of this happens in the first two weeks of December, and the exact dates move every year. Treat what follows as a list of things that happen, not as a schedule. Look each one up before you set off.
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December Nights, Balboa Park
The big one, usually the first weekend of December and usually free: the museums open late and without charge, the park fills with food and choirs, and several hundred thousand people come. Park badly and you will spend an hour getting out, so use the shuttle from the park-and-ride if they are running one.
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Ocean Beach Holiday Parade
Newport Avenue, early December, and the least polished parade in the county in the best possible way. Fifteen minutes from the house and easily the most local-feeling evening on this page.
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La Jolla Christmas Parade
Girard Avenue, usually a Sunday in early December. Smarter than Ocean Beach and rather shorter, with the village lit up afterwards and somewhere to get a hot chocolate.
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Liberty Station
A tree lighting and a holiday market in the old naval training centre, ten minutes down the coast. Wide paths, room for prams, and food that is better than the setting suggests.
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The Del’s tree, and the rink
The Hotel del Coronado lights its tree in late November or early December and runs an outdoor ice rink on the sand into the new year. Skating beside the Pacific is a genuinely strange thing to do and worth the drive for that alone.
The lights, after dark
There are three different evenings here and it is worth knowing which is which before you get in the car.
- Boats, on one particular night. Two parades of lit-up boats. The Mission Bay one is small, local and close enough to walk to: markers 1 and 2 below. The San Diego Bay one is the big one, eighty-odd boats, and you watch it from Shelter Island: marker 6. Both happen on set evenings in December and then they are over for the year, so find the date before you plan around it.
- Lit-up streets, any evening in December. La Jolla, Ocean Beach and Liberty Station string lights along their main streets for the whole month. No date needed and nothing to book: park once, walk about for half an hour, buy a hot chocolate, drive home. Markers 3, 4 and 5.
- Houses, and a queue of cars. The famous streets of decorated houses are all inland, about twenty-five minutes east, and the one thing on this page the map cannot reach. Details underneath the map.
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Fanuel Street Park
On Sail Bay at the bottom of the hill: twenty minutes on foot from the front door, five in the car. A patch of grass right on the water.
Go here for: the Mission Bay boat parade, on one evening in December. Walkable from the house, so no parking to worry about.
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Ski Beach, Mission Bay
The far side of Mission Bay, off Ingraham Street, about ten minutes in the car. Proper car park, room to spread out.
Go here for: the same parade, the same evening, if you are driving and bringing chairs.
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Girard Avenue, La Jolla
The main street of La Jolla village, fifteen minutes north. Lights along Girard and round the corner onto Prospect.
Go here for: lit-up streets to walk along, any evening in December. Also where the La Jolla parade runs, on one afternoon early in the month.
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Newport Avenue, Ocean Beach
Ocean Beach’s main street, fifteen minutes south, running down to the pier.
Go here for: the Ocean Beach parade on its one evening, or a walk down a lit main street on any other. Scruffier than La Jolla and more fun.
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Liberty Station
The old naval training centre on the way out to Point Loma, about fifteen minutes. Wide lit promenades and a big car park.
Go here for: the tree and the holiday market, most evenings through December. The easiest of these with a pram, and the only one where parking is not an argument.
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Shelter Island
Out on the harbour past Point Loma, twenty minutes. The pier end is where people stand.
Go here for: the San Diego Bay Parade of Lights, on two Sunday evenings in December: eighty-odd decorated boats down the bay with the skyline behind them. Harbor Island and the Coronado ferry landing work too. Go early, dress for wind off the water, and expect it colder than the day suggested.
Lights on houses
Christmas Card Lane, Rancho Peñasquitos. The one everybody means. A whole neighbourhood around Oviedo Street has been putting out enormous hand-painted plywood Christmas cards for decades, and by mid-December the queue of cars is part of the experience. About twenty-five minutes inland, well east of the map above. You stay in the car; go on a weeknight and go early in December if you would rather not queue.
Beyond that one, the streets that go all out change from year to year, and a list written in advance is a list that sends you to a dark house. The reliable way to find the current ones is to search for a San Diego holiday lights map for that year. The local papers and the neighbourhood apps publish one every December, with the streets that are actually doing it and the nights they switch on. There is usually a drive-through display at the Del Mar fairgrounds as well; worth checking whether it is running before you make the trip.
Nothing on this page is a schedule. Dates, hours, ticket prices and whether a thing happens at all move every year, and several of these are run by volunteers. Look each one up before you drive over. Nothing here is paid or sponsored.
Christmas morning
The part that surprises people who have flown in from somewhere cold.
The beach, on the day →
Tourmaline is at the top of the street and there will be people surfing it on Christmas morning in Santa hats. It is the single most San Diego thing available to you.
Sunset at five →
Late December sunsets land just before five, which means the sky does something dramatic right as everyone is thinking about the second round of food.
Somewhere to run about →
Kate Sessions up the hill, for the view over the bay and for children who have been indoors since breakfast.
The last-minute run →
What is open on Christmas Eve, what closes early, and which corner shop to walk to when something has been forgotten.