Spending Christmas in Venice (2025)

Be prepared to get take out in the morning of Christmas Eve for that night and for Christmas Day. Hotels restaurants will be open to feed their guests.

You didn't say whether you plan to book a hotel - so if you are even considering an Air B&B or similar, I'd strongly urge you to reconsider. We booked a non-hotel situation in Venice in the summertime and just days before we were due to arrive, the booking was cancelled. After lengthy calls to the agency, we ended up with their best offer of two difference residences for our stay, for the same price. Upside was they were very nice, but downside was we had to pack up and move halfway through our stay. Our lesson: when the stakes are high, always book a hotel. That should also guarantee you access to a nice meal.

Thanks for the reply, we are definitely planning on staying in a hotel and understand that most of the time their restaurants will be open. I also found that Poste Vecie has already scheduled a 2025 Christmas Eve dinner they do every year and reached out about when is the earliest we can reserve a table. So was thinking of doing Poste Vecie set meal and midnight mass 12/24. Now to keep searching for anything Christmas day.

Every major tourism city has something going on for every holiday. You just gotta do a bit of research. Sometimes what ever it is can be more memorable than a "regular" day. I think you will have a brilliant time. I think its an excellent idea.

New Year’s Day – Venice 2011.

We went to the Piazza for a look at the New Years Eve celebration put on by the Commune d’ Venezia, had a gelato, and ran away. I can’t believe that a shouting disk jockey, every second word being “allora”, with exhortations to kiss somebody, is the best that Venice can provide. No live music, too stage managed, people saying happy things while reading them from a script. The patrons of Florians, drinking tea, looked somewhat bored. I understand that the disk jockey is a leading radio personality in Italy; in which case, he must owe his job to having the dirt on Berlusconi, maybe some raunchy photographs of the PM. So we decamped to Campo Margerita, where the local civil war was continuing.

It could have been Dublin, the Rising, Easter, 1916, Patrick Pearse leading the defence. The boys manning the mortar battery on the steps of the Scuole Grande d’ Carmini kept up a sustained barrage, despite cracker attack from the lads at the Ex Scuole dei Varoteri, and Madigan’s bar coming under small arms fire from the crew at the adjacent pizzeria. The staff at Madigans are to be commended, Daniel Manin would have been proud of them, for the way that they continued to serve spritzes despite the odd grenade rolling in the door, fizzers and whiz-bangs exploding behind the bar. All the while the bar maid maintaining a conversation on her mobile phone, pouring spritzes one handed.

The cost of spritzes doubled at midnight, maybe a reflection that it was a holiday, maybe a surcharge for the fact that glasses were unlikely to make it back into the bar, or maybe it was an ammunition levy. Hostilities became one-sided when the pizzeria pulled down the shutters, and Madigan’s ammo was exhausted. The smell of powder drifting across the campo, the occasional “whoomph” of H.E. in the distance.

The combatants settled their differences after running out of crackers, but not running out of alcohol, by singing revolutionary songs, a guy on harmonica, and a couple of blokes on acoustic. Revolutionary songs like “Blue suede shoes”, “Twist-a and shout-a”, “Happy Birthday”, “Jail-a House-a Rock”.

A most good-natured bunch of people, I wish them all, I wish everyone, Buon Anno and Augeri. New Years Day is pretty quiet, a lot of shutters not yet opened, even at 1:30 PM.