Spending the week before Christmas in the Arctic Circle, where the sun never actually comes up, isn't for everyone. But I'm here to tell you that Finnish Lapland is nothing short of magical around Christmas time, and I couldn't recommend the trip enough … especially if you can fly lie-flat business class using your points and miles to get there.
So why am I so high on a trip through Finnish Lapland? Because it's full of coziness, quiet time, reading by the fire, saunas and hot tubs, and unspoiled, beautiful landscapes that are the stuff of winter dreams.
Lapland is a winter wonderland around Christmastime, and nobody celebrates Christmas like the people who live among the reindeer. Here are four highlights from my recent trip and one surprising lowlight, too.
Finnair Business Class & Lounges
This trip was inspired, in part, by my desire to fly Finnair Business Class.
Finnair's new business class seats on its A350 planes are unique. Unlike most business class seats or suites that recline into a lie-flat bed, Finnair's seats do not. And to me, that's a good thing.
Read our Full Review of Finnair Business Class
The massive, plush shell of a seat includes several pillows to help support you if you want to lie back. There's only one mechanical part of the seat that extends from underneath the seat to fill in the foot area, transforming the entire seat into a lie-flat bed.
The end result is something extremely spacious and much larger than other business class seats flying to Europe, which comes in handy when you're flying with a restless infant. When I turned my seat into a bed, I was still able to sit up and watch a movie while my daughter played on the huge, flat, padded area near my feet.
She spent hours on her stomach and back playing with her toys while I ate my dinner, watched movies, and got to enjoy the business class experience. She was put in a bassinet on top of the seats (only available in the first row seats in the middle of the aircraft, which is why we chose them) for bedtime and got a solid six hours of sleep on the flight up!
To book these seats, you need just 63,000 Finnair Avios points each way. Last year, I used our own Thrifty Traveler Premium flight deal alert to book our two seats and two seats for my in-laws, who were flying in the next day (Finnair only releases two seats at a time).
This flight deal alert is from just a few days ago, where we were already alerting our members to December 2026 seats that are now coming online. That means the best time to book your Christmas 2026 trip (in these seats) is just around the corner.
To book Finnair Business Class, you'll need to have the right points and miles – fortunately, that part is pretty easy: You can transfer points from Amex, Bilt, Chase, Capital One, Citi, or Wells Fargo to book with any of these three airlines.
The rates are a standard 63,000 each way when you book with Finnair, which is what we did. That price even includes a connection up to Lapland.
The connections to Lapland (Oulu, Rovaniemi, Ivalo, and more) are in economy, so the airline doesn't charge you any more to book them.
Roundtrip flights price out at 125,000 Finnair Avios, which is also the price for two passengers. This is what it looks like to book all the way at the end of the calendar for December 2026 right now.
The checkout page displays 125,000 Avios and 271.34 euros in taxes and fees (approximately $315) for two passengers traveling one way.
If you want to book the same flights in economy, it's only 60,000 points roundtrip and $187 in taxes and fees. Meanwhile, Finnair's new premium economy product will run you 87,000 Avios roundtrip and $234 in taxes and fees.
Ultimately, I can only vouch for the experience up front, but Finnair Business Class is probably my second favorite business class seat I've ever flown – second only to ANA's “The Room.”
Lounges in Dallas & Helsinki
We booked our flights on Finnair Business Class to and from Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW), which offers a tremendous on-the-ground experience thanks to the American Airlines Flagship Lounge, available to all passengers flying on Oneworld business class tickets.
Read Our Full Review of the DFW AA Flagship Lounge
Interestingly, at check-in, the Finnair agents told us we only had access to the Capital One Lounge (DFW), which I knew was incorrect. When we checked in at Capital One, there was a 90-minute wait. So we went over to the Flagship Lounge and were let right in, no questions asked. So, bottom line: You do have access to the Flagship Lounge as a Finnair Business Class flyer – despite what the agents and boarding pass say. Weird!
In Helsinki (HEL), Finnair's Business Class Lounge for non-Schengen passengers is an exceptional space. Near Gate 52, this sprawling, modern, and quiet lounge provided a great space to spend a little time before our long flight back to Dallas.
This bar is the centerpiece of the dining area of the lounge, which was decked out for Christmas.
Finnair is, after all, the official airline of Santa Claus. Santa even does the preflight announcements!
Ivalo, Inari, & Saariselka
Can I try to sell you Finnish Lapland in one scene?
Imagine … it's your first night in Finland. You read the Northern Lights forecast (use the Northern Lights Alert app) and it says that activity is “low” tonight. But you head out to the hot tub anyway, it's 20 degrees Fahrenheit, and you have a hot cup of Glögi (Finnish mulled wine), and you sit back, look up, and see … this.
Yes, that photo was taken from the hot tub of our Airbnb (check it out here!) on the sprawling Lake Inari in far northern Lapland. It didn't feel “low” to me!
To get to this moment, we flew from Helsinki (more on that later) up to Ivalo (IVL) on Finnair. Ivalo is far into the Arctic Circle and one of the northernmost airports in all of Europe. The flight time is approximately an hour and 20 minutes from HEL.
What you get when you land in Ivalo in late December is called “Polar Night.” The sun never actually comes up. This photo taken of my wife and I, ice skating on frozen Lake Inari (check out the activity here), shows what it looks like most of the day. The sun “rises” at about 9:30 or 10 a.m. and looks like this until about noon. Then it starts to “set”, which also looks more or less like this until about 1:30 or 2 p.m. when it becomes dark again.
If you think that doesn't sound like a good time, I will insist that you're wrong. It's so beautiful there when the sun is up, and when it is dark, life goes on in Lapland! For instance, this hike we took in the town of Inari (about 40 minutes from Ivalo), happened at about 2:30 in the afternoon.
But the hiking trail was softly lit the whole way, and throughout Lapland there are public fireplaces (which you can see in the background beyond the Jäniskoski suspension bridge), where locals keep cabins stocked with wood and fireplaces ready to light.
This beautiful hike started an evening in Inari that also included a visit to the Sami Museum (Europe's 2024 Museum of the Year) – a tribute and encyclopedia of the Sami people (Europe's only indigenous people) and the whole of Lapland for which they've been stewards for centuries.
After that, we had our big splurge of the trip: A five-course meal at Wilderness Hotel Nangu – which was delicious, fun, and worth every penny.
During our Lappish adventure, we also drove to Saariselkä for one day – a resort town about 45 minutes south of Ivalo. Saariselkä is home to many Northern Lights lodges, a ski resort, and serves as the entry point to Urho Kekkonen National Park. It's where most of the area's tourism is centered and is a little more bustling than Inari or Ivalo.
It's also home to the northernmost ski area in Europe, which I, of course, had to sample for myself.
Skiing in Polar Night is bizarre. The slopes were just light enough to navigate, with some floodlights also helping on the busier runs. Plus, every lift tower had its own colored lights on it, making for a fun, funky vibe all over the slopes.
There's just one chairlift, supplemented by a few T-bar surface lifts to take you up two different, neighboring mountains. It's not a massive resort, and it's not particularly steep. I would say the skiing itself is not world-class, but it was a surreal and cool experience that I don't regret. Ski, boot, & helmet rentals, along with a half-day lift ticket, were $100 total.
There is also the country's longest toboggan run on the Saariselkä resort called Aurora Toboggan – a surprisingly rowdy, but groomed track down the mountain and through the woods. For two hours of lift access and toboggan rental, it cost us $65 each.
Overall, the Inari/Ivalo region of Lapland is charming, beautiful, and the purest form of Finnish Lapland. I couldn't recommend it more.
1 Night in Helsinki's Xmas Markets
On our way to Lapland, we spent 24 hours in the country's capital, Helsinki (HEL), a charming coastal city that goes BIG for Christmas.
The main Christmas market in Helsinki (in Senate Square) was bustling with Christmas shoppers, visitors like us, and people just enjoying the Glögi and beer gardens. You can see the setup, all centered around the main statue, a massive Christmas tree, and a merry-go-round in the middle of the square, behind the heads of my beautiful wife and daughter.
Helsinki was unusually warm when we were there – around 40 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit – so it wasn't snowy. But the entire city was decked out for the holidays.
We stayed at the Hotel Kamp, about two blocks from this Christmas market. The charming five-star hotel was a quintessential example of old-world luxury (think doormen in top hats), but had been recently renovated in a classy manner.
It's part of Amex's Fine Hotels & Resorts, so I was able to use one of the semi-annual $300 hotel credits from my American Express Platinum Card® to book a night, effectively reducing the $350 nightly rate to just $50. We also got a room upgrade at check-in, a $100 dining credit for the hotel's incredible restaurant A La Kamp, and were allowed to check in at noon and check out as late as 4 p.m. the next day.
Rovaniemi & Santa Claus Village
After our stay in Ivalo, we drove three-and-a-half hours to the city of Rovaniemi – the capital of Lapland and the area's largest city. You can get to Rovaniemi with flights from all over Europe, including several a day from Helsinki. You can also get there by train – the northernmost train stop in the country.
It's also home to the world famous Santa Claus Village (more on that later), which is a massive draw for tourists all over the world.
The end result: Rovaniemi was extremely busy the week before Christmas, bordering on overwhelming for us.
But Rovaniemi had a lot to offer. The first night, we hit up the local professional hockey game to see RoKi Hockey take on TuTo in the Finnish Tier 2 league. Tickets were 20 euro per person for open seating – a great deal.
If you like hockey, it's a blast – and even if you're not a hockey fan and are just interested in local culture, this is would still be a worthwhile experience for you! Lappi Arena was vibrant, full of singing and cheering, and was definitely where all the locals were on a winter's night.
Rovaniemi is the final stop in Lapland for a lot of tourists, and that's because it still has a lot of what Lapland has to offer with the creature comforts of the big city. Even under the city lights, we still caught this glimpse at the Northern Lights on our last night in town. For the clearest lights, however, you'll want to escape the city.
In Rovaniemi, we had two excellent dinners: One at Gustav Kitchen & Bar and another at Kotahovi Lappish Restaurant in Santa Claus Village.
Santa Claus Village
OK … it's time to talk about Santa Claus Village, which was definitely the lowlight of the trip. But that might have been our fault. Let me explain.
Santa Claus Village is a free-to-enter rendering of the entire North Pole. It's home to Santa (the real one!), and also home to everything Finland-winter has to offer, like reindeer rides, sleigh rides, dogsledding tours, Mrs. Claus's house, Santa's post office, and … flocks of major brands and corporate sponsors, too.
While entry into the park is free, every breath you take in the park seemingly isn't. This photo of us with the real Santa required a 90-minute wait and cost us more than $50 per picture. (You're not allowed to take your own.)
Every experience – including entry into Snowman Land that includes the famous ice bar and ice restaurant – costs something, and the entire park was mobbed with people. It was a whirling nightmare of screaming children and chaos. It was not the magical North Pole experience it was billed to be.
I will couch my criticism in three major caveats, because our negative experience was perhaps our fault.
- We went in the middle of the afternoon on probably the busiest day of the year at Santa Claus Village, the Sunday before Christmas. It was the peak of peak crowds at the resort, so we probably saw the worst of it.
- We had just come from one of the quietest, most isolated places on earth for four straight days, and then were thrust into Santa Claus Village on its busiest day of the year. The contrast was overwhelming.
- Finally, our daughter was only six months old at the time of our visit. That's not old enough for her to do any of the activities. Had she been two years old or older, she probably would have delighted in more of the kid-focused activities. Santa Claus Village wasn't made for two 30-somethings and grandparents – it's for kids aged two to 12.
With hindsight, those three factors probably colored my experience a great deal. For families with young kids, I'd still recommend going, but I'd recommend getting an earlier start in the day, and trying to avoid those peak days.
Bottom Line
Finnish Lapland is a unique, magical trip that I couldn't recommend more.
Finnair Business Class, the Ivalo/Inari region of Northern Lapland, and a layover in Helsinki all made for an idyllic Christmastime trip, even if Rovaniemi and Santa Claus Village underwhelmed.
