Malta at Christmas Time

FYI, Get Your Guide is not a tour company, it's more like a broker/middleman. If possible, you should try to identify tour companies and deal with them directly, usually cheaper and better communication. You can often figure them out from clues on the Get Your Guide site. We used three companies for group tours while in Malta; City Walking Tours Malta for a food tour and a tour of Mdina and Rabat; Colour My Travel for a Valletta walking tour (unnecessary after the food tour) and a 3 Cities tour; and a full day Jeep tour of Gozo from Gozo Pride Tours. It looks like they all have tours available during your time frame. As for private guides, google lists several, and I'm sure many would be happy to work during that week. Can't help you with boat tours, although I would expect the weather to not be a problem. Buses: if you're staying in Valletta, it's fairly easy to take the buses anywhere. Not true if you're staying in, for example, St Julian's or Sliema. Bolt appears to be the most common rideshare app. There are also traditional cabs. And there are hop-on/hop-off buses as well.

Thank you so much for your thorough reply!

Coincidentally, I was on both Malta and Gozo in that time of the year - twice, actually.

The weather was usually nice: cool, around 15 Celsius or 60 Fahrenheit, mostly sunny, slightly windy. The country is surprisingly green that time! And it turns out olive trees look surprisingly charming as Christmas trees…

Busses are going everywhere, and extremely cheap - a week pass is about 25€. Otherwise, you can go with private drivers, called eCabs, which are cheaper than taxis. Mdina and Marsaxlokk are super easy bus trips, though.

Are you staying in Valletta? There is a nice boat service with gondolas to the other side of the harbor for, quite literally, a bit of change. Called a „water taxi“.

If you like natural landmarks, I recommend to walk along the Dingli cliffs as an addition to visiting Mdina. Stunning view!

That is SUCH a helpful answer! Thank you very much.

Just a few more hints and ideas:
1. If you are into British afternoon tea / high tea, it is frequently served at hotels and other ventures due to a significant British heritage. Be sure to only grab a light snack for lunch, and do not plan for dinner - it is usually more than enough to keep you satisfied.
2. Check Busketts Gardens if you might like them - my wife does a lot. Orange groves and a nice stroll, but a little off.
3. If you want to visit the Hypogeum, make sure to book weeks in advance - spots are limited and in high demand even in winter.
4. Visiting a megalithic site in the open is going to be much nicer than in summer - if this is something you’re interested in.
5. I guess you are asking for Marsaxlokk because of the market? Just a friendly reminder that it is only on Sundays.
6. Unless you are young and like the nightlife, neither Sliema nor St. Julian’s is really going to be worth it.
7. Both St. George and Mellieha are very much asleep in winter.

VERY helpful. Do you know how to book the Hypogeum?

Sure, directly through their website:
https://heritagemalta.mt/store/s81/
It looks however as if your dates are already sold out - only dates before Christmas are still available. If it offers any solace, I have never been myself - just too hard to get. As a „sort of replacement“, Mdina, or more specifically the surrounding Rabat, has early Christian (late antiquity) catacombs.

And a quick food tip: Try the local variant of Pizza made with Maltese bread dough, called a „Gozitan Ftira“. In Valletta, Ta‘Nenu („the artisan baker“) specializes in these, and other maltese classics/specialties.

Tickets to the Hypogeum often sell out many months in advance. The facility is small, they intentionally limit the number of people allowed in (to help preserve the underground environment - all those tourists breathing down there isn't good for preservation). So they only allow in a few dozen visitors each day.

I suspect many (most? nearly all?) advance tickets are bought up by cruise ship passengers or re-sellers (what we used to call "scalpers") looking to make a fast Euro by scooping them all up and then selling them to cruise ship passengers (there are a LOT of cruise ship passengers there).

Dirty little Maltese secret: A small number of Hypogeum tickets are held back for sale on the day-of (or possibly the day-before? I don't recall, you'll need to check this with Heritage Malta). You can get tickets, but you will need to...

1. Get up painfully early on ticket-buying day, go to their office in Valletta, and wait in line for them to open (I was there in line about 6 am, and there were already a couple people ahead of me who had got there even earlier). Exactly how early you need to be there? No way to know, it depends on demand/degree of motivation (think Taylor Swift or Beyonce tickets...). We were there in late September. No idea what demand would be like around the Christmas/New Years holidays.

2. Pay through the nose. Last-minute tickets came with a large surcharge (how large? I forget, but it was significant - prepare for some sticker shock).

Hope that helps.