Tenerife in December and January: Christmas, New Year and snow on Mount Teide, from the north of the island

Saturday 5 to Tuesday 8 December is the puente, the Spanish long weekend: the Immaculate Conception falls on a Tuesday in 2026 and the north fills up with families from the island and the mainland. It's the first weekend with the guachinches open and, if the first cold front has come through, the first with snow on the summit.

The 24th and the 31st are half days: shops shut early in the afternoon, and the restaurants that open in the evening do so with a set menu and a booking, often taken since November. On 25 December and 1 January almost everything closes, supermarkets included. There is no Boxing Day here: the 26th is a normal day. And 6 January, Epiphany — Reyes — is a public holiday across Spain, so between the afternoon of the 5th and the morning of the 7th the shopping needs to be done.

New Year's Eve happens in the street. Puerto de la Cruz, fifteen minutes away, sees the year out with music and fireworks over the fishing harbour; and in every house, twelve grapes at midnight, one per chime. On the afternoon of 5 January, from three o'clock, the Three Kings parade winds through La Orotava and ends with a living nativity in the square outside the town hall: it's the busiest day of the year in the old town, tens of thousands of people, and the parking goes early. On the 6th, breakfast is roscón, the kings' cake.

That's the date that changes the north. On St Andrew's Day, 30 November, the wine cellars open and the new wine is tasted; the night before, Puerto de la Cruz drags old pots and pans through the streets to celebrate it. From then on the guachinches are in season — the houses where a grower serves the wine from his own harvest with three home-cooked dishes; the regulation caps them at four months a year. Which is why December and January are the months with the most of them open.

Roast chestnuts, pork, potatoes with mojo and this year's wine, in a garage or a courtyard in the mid-slopes of La Orotava, Santa Úrsula or La Matanza, ten to fifteen minutes from the estate. They have no website and no fixed menu, and each season it's a different set. Ask us which are open the week you come: it's one of the things people come back for in winter. How they work is in our guide to guachinches near La Orotava.

Between December and March it snows on the summits several times a season. There's no date; it depends on a cold front coming through, and that can be 8 December or 20 January. From the valley you see the white cone over the green — the postcard nobody expects from the Canaries.

What you need to know is what happens on the day it snows: the Cabildo, the island council, closes the access roads to the national park by protocol — the TF-21 from La Caldera, just above Aguamansa, and the TF-24 from the Los Loros junction — for as long as there's snow or ice on the road, and doesn't reopen until the ploughs have been through. That day you don't go up, however much you want to. The next day, or two days later, it reopens and half the island drives up at once: there's a queue on the road from early morning.

The cable car shuts without notice in winds over 40 km/h, which are common in winter, and until 31 December the last ascent is at 4 pm. Check the road and the cable car the same morning, not the night before. The rest — the summit permit, how the climb works — is in our cable car guide and the guide to the summit permit.

In December the sun sets shortly after six. Check-in at the houses is between four and six in the afternoon, and it's worth arriving in daylight: the track to the estate is a country lane and you want to see it the first time. Outings happen in the morning; by five the streetlights are on in La Orotava's old town.

December is the wettest month of the year in the north, with January just behind. It doesn't rain every day, but when it does, it means it; the month-by-month figures are in when to visit north Tenerife. In the valley the highs stay at 16-18 °C. What works: mornings outdoors, and for the afternoon the Casa de los Balcones, the crafts museum in the Santo Domingo convent or a guachinche. If what you want is a swim in the sea every day, the south is your side of the island at this time of year — we say so plainly in where to stay: north or south.

After 6 January the north empties. These are the weeks with the fewest people of the year in the old town, on the trails and in the guachinches, and the best for anyone who comes to walk: January air is the clearest for seeing Teide from the valley, and the snow up top, when there is some, stays.

Towards the end of the month the almond blossom starts in Santiago del Teide, an hour away on the northern motorway: in 2026 the season ran from 24 January to 22 February, with guided walks at weekends and the long route between Santiago del Teide and Arguayo, about ten kilometres through lava fields and almond trees. It's the outing for a January Sunday, and you drive back to a guachinche for lunch.

In December what counts is what nobody looks at in August. The three houses at Hacienda Verde have heating, and each has its own kitchen with an oven, hob and fridge: Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas lunch is cooked at home, with the shopping done on the morning of the 24th, without depending on a restaurant being open. There's a washing machine, wifi and a private terrace, and the parking is inside the estate.

The pool is shared and unheated; in December, at 500 metres up, it isn't for swimming even when the sun's out, and we'd rather say so. What is there: 17,000 square metres of garden and Teide straight ahead, white on the days after it has snowed.

Casa Azul is being renovated and is bookable again from 15 December 2026: for the puente there are two houses, La Era and El Castaño; for Christmas and Reyes, all three. Each house sleeps up to four, so a family of eight or twelve spreads across several houses. The price depends on the dates and the number of nights; we confirm it the same day you write. Across the island, Christmas and New Year get booked months ahead — if you have your dates, it's better to ask now than in November.