What is Morocco like at Christmas?

Christmas is one of the busiest and most expensive weeks of the entire Moroccan year, and I want travellers to know that going in. Morocco is a Muslim country, so December 25th is an ordinary working day here — there is no public holiday, almost nothing closes, and you won't find a city draped in lights and trees the way you would in Europe. What you will find is half of Europe and North America escaping the cold, so Marrakech, Fes, the desert camps and the coast fill right up. I tell people to book riads and desert camps two to three months ahead for the Christmas-and-New-Year fortnight, because the good ones sell out and the ones that remain charge their highest rates of the year — typically 30 to 50 percent above a quiet spring week.

The weather is, frankly, a big part of the appeal and worth the premium. Days in Marrakech and the south are mild and reliably sunny, often 18–20°C, perfect for wandering the medina in a shirt while friends back home are scraping ice off the car. The catch is the nights, which get genuinely cold — single figures in the cities, below freezing in the desert and the Atlas, which often has snow you can see glinting on the High Atlas peaks from a Marrakech rooftop. Pack proper layers; people consistently underestimate how cold a desert night in December is.

The festive atmosphere, where it exists, is created by the hospitality industry rather than the culture. Riads, luxury hotels and many restaurants catering to international guests put on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners — think a French-Moroccan feast, sometimes a tree in the courtyard, carol music, a gift on your pillow — and these are lovely but should be booked well in advance, as they're often ticketed and sell out. The big resort hotels in Marrakech and Agadir go further with full programmes. Independent of all that, the souks, monuments and restaurants run exactly as normal, which many people actually find refreshing — a holiday without the relentless Christmas machine.

My honest verdict: Christmas in Morocco is wonderful if you want guaranteed sunshine, a festive riad dinner without the commercial frenzy, and a once-in-a-lifetime Christmas night in the Sahara — and you're at peace with paying peak prices and sharing the headline sights. If you're price-sensitive or crowd-averse, the very same mild weather is available for far less in late November or February. But for the people I've sent at Christmas, a tagine dinner under desert stars on the 25th has a magic that no European Christmas can touch.