Spending the holidays with J and his family in the Netherlands has been a lovely and fascinating experience. We all have our particular ways of celebrating Christmas but it's nice to experience other customs, too. There was no decadent Noche Buena and silly White Elephant gift exchange for me this year, but I got to enjoy freshly baked Weihnacht Stolle on Christmas morning, an extended second day of Christmas, a lovely walk in De Hei to work off all the holiday treats, and a visit to the charming Christmas market in Amsterdam.

Amsterdam has also created a new holiday tradition with the Amsterdam Light Festival, which lights up the canals with different installations. The best way to see everything is to hop on a canal boat tour, but you're likely to see many of them simply by walking and biking through this beautiful city.

Wherever and however you are celebrating this wonderful season, I wish you the merriest and brightest of days!

The last week before Christmas always tend to be crazy for everyone and I'm no exception. I always travel at this time of the year so that I can spend the holidays with my loved ones, so that comes with lots of rushing between year-end get-togethers with friends, last-minute hustling at work, and getting piles of errands out of the way. The past few days have been nothing short of hectic. But last night at least, I got to take a breather from the madness and take in the spectacular holiday sights at Dyker Heights.

My friends and I trekked to this Brooklyn nabe, drawn by stories of mansions magnificently lit up for the holidays. Dyker Heights certainly lived up to our expections. As we walked from block to block, we saw one house after another crowded with our favorite Christmas characters, festooned with Santas and reindeer, graced with nativity scenes, and draped with tons of twinkling lights.

We all have our favorite Christmas traditions. Some people absolutely must see the lighting of the tree in Rockefeller Center, others simply have to skate in Central Park, and still more insist on dressing up as Santa for a pub crawl. My personal favorite is to soak up the exquisite holiday windows at Bergdorf Goodman (for windows of Christmases past, click here and here). This year's windows are the most brilliant that I've seen to date—figuratively and literally. Bergdorf Goodman partnered with Swarovski for their sparkling displays, embedding a total of 7,024,615 crystals in their holiday tableaus. It's quite a sight to behold. Their visual design team's attention to detail is staggering; I could've spent an hour looking at every bedazzled piece.

With just a little more than 2 weeks left before Christmas, time will surely breeze by in a frenzy of holiday parties, shopping, travel and rushing to tie up loose ends at school and/or work. For myself, personally, I hope that I can keep myself from getting completely swept up and try enjoy all the little things that make this season so happy and bright. I hope you, too, will all get to enjoy your own special traditions and I wish you the happiest of holidays!