idyllic Christmas eve in Austria

"We are trying to find the perfect combination of the authentic (aka small village with hidden suprises)Christmas experience and good/great skiing in Austria for our family this Christmas." If you want decent skiing, you just have to accept that the town or village needs the infrastructure to support a winter sports industry. Does that make a place like St. Anton "inauthentic" because they have enough restaurants, ski shops and hotels to cater to the people who visit? Certainly not. There are plenty of towns with skiing that don't attract any tourists, but these usually have only one or two lifts and a handful of short pistes. Not something you would travel all the way to Europe to ski. More like something for the residents to do for an hour or two after work. I haven't been to St. Anton, but I love nearby Lech. It's smaller, and more isolated, but also rather expensive and exclusive. But the skiing's top notch, and the views are pretty amazing (on a clear day). If you want an even smaller village, you could consider nearby Zurs, but this is almost all hotels and restaurants.

There's loads of great options of ski areas with super atmosphere in Austria. If you're trying to book for this Christmas it's doubtful you'll find a lot of choices, the Germans, Swiss (who like to vacay for cheap in Austria), and other Europeans all booked months ago. Book now, it's going to get more expensive every day. Lech and Kitzbuhel are both awesome ski areas with apres-ski atmosphere. If you need to stay on the Salzburg side, look down the Saalbach-Hinterglemm valley, or around the Dachstein Glacier area. This website: http://www.j2ski.com/ has a good mapping feature for you to compare pistes and towns.