I'm looking for a short break around Europe holiday this December also (I live in Ireland, but looking to travel as long as it's not too far) so maybe if I share my conclusions with you it might help?

As mentioned above, the beaches / nice weather is simply not there in Europe in December. So my conclusion is that we have 2 options:

1. stay within Europe and embrace the winter, and go somewhere with a wintery atmosphere. Some ideas here: there's a lovely spa hotel near lake Geneva, Switzerland/Italy for pre-skiing season walking in the snowy mountains, St Petersburg, Tallinn has a couple of nice hotels and a christmas market. Some places I've been but that are lovely that time of year are Prague, Paris, Copenhagen, the Ice Hotel in northern Sweden - all have lovely christmassy atmospheres, e.g. Copenhagen has a skating rink in the centre of town etc.

Option 2: follow the sun - but to do this you need to go outside Europe. We are thinking of Marakkesh, last year we went to Dubai, but you really need to be thinking North Africa, Canaries, maybe at a push Cyprus if you want pleasant weather.

Marakesh is the obvious place to go, there are night clubs (in the international area) and at least one classy hotel if you like that sort of thing but the real pleasure is the chilled out hotels in the souk, the tiny spas and the souck centre with perhaps a day out to the high atlas. Drop over to the Africa forum and look up my name

<<which leaves me with only Europe as an option.>> South Africa is perfect at Christmas time and what about South America or the Caribbean?

Agree that for beach weather in winter you want to look at the Carib or Hawaii if you don't want to do Oz/NZ.

In europe not only is there no guarantee of late spring/summer weather in winter - but it's really quite unlikely almost everyplace.

Look more closely at the Caribbean. It has great weather then, plus night life on many of the islands.