California truly shines around Christmas week each year. Much to the ire of Sierra Nevada mountain resorts, there’s not a whole lot of snow to go around, but plenty of sunshine and warm weather, with temperatures ranging from 55 in South Lake Tahoe, to the 70s in Southern California, 60s in Sacramento, San Francisco and San Jose, and 50s in the frigid far north city of Eureka.

Hundreds of thousands of people are out strolling, driving, and taking boat cruises looking at the holiday lights displays throughout the State of California on the week from Christmas Day to New Year’s Day. Some of the residential light displays cost more than $50,000 to assemble on mansions and luxury yachts! Amazing.

Seen is sister and brother, Crystal and Doug Winston, who live in Point Loma (San Diego,) and are out walking the family dog and posing for a photo on Christmas Day in Los Angeles County where they are visiting their grandmother. Can you imagine wearing shirt sleeves as the sun goes down on December 25th? Though we take it for granted, visitors marvel at the pleasant, summer-like weather. However, as a side note, the rest of the U.S. is having really WARM weather right now. Miami beats us out with 83 degrees tomorrow! And the rest of the U.S. is in the 40s and 50s after incredible snow and ice storms last week. Even in Bern, Switzerland it will hit the 40s tomorrow!

We took the holiday stroll along with thousands of other people on Christmas evening to look at the light decorations and couldn’t believe how many languages were spoken–German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese dialects, and many we couldn’t even recognize. California is truly the melting pot of cultures, and seldom lets down global travelers during Christmas and New Year’s holidays, offering fantastic winter weather, the trademark of the state.

If you are not out shopping and returning gifts, get out and take a walk today to see picture perfect backdrops and experience “shirt sleeve & shorts” climate. Happy trails!