You may recognise this sight, the Christmas tree outside the Rockefeller Building in NYC. The city is both a rite of passage of the festive season and the setting for countless Christmas classics, so make it your stage this December with the countless other visitors who decide to escape the constraints of home. A festive cracker, the Big Apple is the most Christmassy place of them all but it's also a hard place to be lonely. Be sure to check out Macy's elaborate Santaland, Rockefeller and FAO Schwarz.

Let's face it, nobody really likes turkey. It's dry, it's bland, and it's horrible. There's a reason its place on our tables is reserved for one or two days a year. The solution? Embrace another sort of Turkey entirely. This vibrant Eurasian city is where continents, and consequently cultures, collide. If Christmas doesn't float your boat, the multicultural nature of Istanbul means you're in company. Instead, explore a city touched by the ages, whether Ottoman, Byzantine, Greek or Roman.

Time for a different sort of escape entirely. Do you yearn to be free from flatulent uncles, great aunts with questionable views and pigs in blankets - those pigs being a portly pair of cousins? Then get up, get out, and go grab that holiday of a lifetime. The Galapagos will take you far away from arguments over Christmas pudding to a place where nature is King. On these islands humans are nothing more than hounding paparazzi bearing witness to the most unique wildlife on the planet.

If you're single and ready to jingle, then why not head up to the capital of Christmas, Lapland, and meet the chief himself? Don't stop at Santa's grotto, though. Unmissable extras are the midnight sun, off-duty reindeer roaming the white pastures, and the Aurora Borealis. There's nothing more enchanting than a day with the elves followed by a night of wonder. The Northern Lights are the Christmas present you never knew you wanted.

Let's be honest, the magic is slowly slipping out of Christmas. Nativity plays feature multiple lobsters, a religious festival has become a retail event to rival Black Friday, and no one even knows what myrrh is anymore. So, rather than playing along with the annual charade, why not go cold turkey on Crimbo and up sticks to Cuba? This naturally festive spot has always shirked the holiday and 2016 is unlikely to be any different. See in the New Year by discovering a world where 2017 looks a lot like 1954.