THE season to be jolly rich is almost upon us.

If you are thinking of escaping, remember the rule of yule, which states that Christmas will almost always be the priciest time of year for a holiday. Tropical sun, anybody?

The cheapest we can find is £1,064pp for a week in a self-catering apartment in the Cape Verde islands (0845 3302071, www.capeverdeexperience.com).

But don't despair. Ways of breaking the rule do exist if you are willing to be a bit flexible in your arrangements. Here are a few suggestions for Christmas breaks in cash-strapped times:

Where to escape to at Christmas

We won’t remind you how awful the festive season is. We’ll simply provide you with the best exit strategies

• The best hotels for Christmas

The best hotels for Christmas

Relax. At Christmas. It is possible. Just let someone else organise the festive fun/horror for you at a top British hotel

• Britain's top 10 hostels

Bag a UK cottage bargain

It’s the bleakest part of the year - perfect for a week off in a cosy country cottage; if not for the log fire, then for the bargain prices

• Big group holiday? Get separate cottages

• Britain's 20 best holiday cottages

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• Where to escape to at Christmas

Lisbon

View an exclusive multimedia slideshow, with a fado soundtrack from Clube de Fado in Lisbon with famous guitarist Mario Pacheco and his band. By Amit Lennon

After the mayhem of Christmas Eve, an aura of heavenly peace and goodwill to travellerkind descends on those who choose to fly from empty airports on the 25th. Forget the no-frills airlines - they ground their fleets for the day. Instead, there are some alluring deals to be had on the full-service carriers, often with free festive fare and fizz thrown in.

Among the first Christmas morning flights from Heathrow is TP351 to Lisbon on TAP Portugal (0845 6010932, www.flytap.com) leaving at 6am (or as soon as Santa frees up the West London airspace), with return fares from £127.60 staying three or four days. You can have a late breakfast on the Tagus waterfront in the Belém district watching Portuguese families walk off the bacalau on which they feasted the night before. The historic sights of Belém (Portuguese for Bethlehem) are open on Boxing Day.

Hole up at the cosy Pensão Residencial Setubalense (00 351 213 636639, www.pensaosetubalense.pt ), a restored 17th-century riverside house. Double rooms from £40 with no seasonal supplements. A taxi from Lisbon airport to Belém costs about £12.

Venice

Oddly, not many tourists visit Venice at Christmas. You don't exactly have the place to yourself, but there are fewer groups following lollipop-brandishing tour guides and many of the tat-touting souvenir stalls are boarded up.

Instead, the Venetians are more in evidence, buying festive panettone from bakeries while children crowd around animated Nativity scenes in the city's churches. On Christmas Eve, it seems as if the whole city congregates in St Mark's Square for midnight Mass in the basilica.

Flights are available on easyJet (www.easyjet.com) from Belfast, Bristol, East Midlands or Gatwick, or Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) from Stansted or Liverpool. The former flies to Marco Polo airport (with prices at £124.52, including taxes), while the latter goes to less-convenient Treviso.

Hotel prices, however, remain prohibitive, and many restaurants close over Christmas. The answer is to stay in a self-catering apartment. A one-bedroom canal-side studio flat costs from £519 for four nights with Venetian Apartments (020-3178 4180, www.venice-rentals.com), a company that does not raise its prices over the period.

Cornwall

'Tis the season to wax the surfboard, rinse the wet-suit and ride the rip curls. At least, it could be if conditions are kind in Cornwall, where the rental company Breaks in Cornwall (01621 784666, www.breaksincornwall.com ) is launching some new properties with enticing Christmas deals. At Green Acres Cottages, near Fowey on the south coast, a two-bedroom cottage sleeping up to six costs £490 for five nights from December 23, including use of a shared indoor heated pool. Over the same period and at the same price, there are two-bedroom flats at Beachcombers Apartment on expansive Watergate Bay, north of Newquay.

With no expensive air fares, you can splash out at the big noise in Cornwall's restaurant scene, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen on Watergate Beach (01637 861000, www.fifteencornwall.co.uk), which is open for lunch on Christmas Day (£85 for five courses) and Boxing Day (£50 for four courses).

St Petersburg

Russian Orthodox Christmas is on January 7, and before that there is one helluva party over new year. However, December 25 is an ordinary working day; as far as tourism goes, it is as low as seasons get. So here is a chance to combine the certainty of a white Christmas, amid scenes that evoke the wintry St Petersburg, right, of Raskolnikov and Anna Karenina, with the most affordable prices this city ever offers. The Winter Palace, Hermitage Museum and Maryinsky Theatre are all open.

Flights are never cheap, but provided you are back before new year, there are offers on British Airways (0844 4930787, www.ba.com ) from Heathrow, the only direct service from the UK, from £289.

The four-star Angleterre Hotel (00 7 812 494 5787, www.angleterrehotel.com), facing St Isaac's cathedral, has a rate of £134 over this period if you stay four nights. Nevsky 88 Apartments (www.nevsky88.com) offer smart one-bedroom flats in a central location from £50 a night.

Skiing

How about Christmas staying free, in an apartment at the Swiss ski resort of Villars, 100m from the nearest chairlift? Or a three-bedroom house at Chambéry in the French Alps - a 15km drive from the slopes, also free. These are just two examples of properties with owners open to offers through Homelink (01962 886882, www.homelinkint.org), a “home exchange” company. Your side of the bargain, or course, is that these owners get to pull their crackers at your place.

Browse the site or ring the number, and pay the one-off fee of £115 only if you have found something hopeful and want to join the network. Other companies offering similar services include Intervac (0845 2605776, www.intervac.co.uk) and Home Base Holidays (020-8886 8752, www.home base-hols.com).

Snowdonia

“Remember your cagoules. And the acne cream. Not to mention tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce.” People can joke, but, as Times Travel reported last month, taking over a youth hostel is a wonderfully economical way for a few families to get together for a house party.

What's more, the YHA, through its Escape To programme (0800 0191700, www.escape-to.co.uk), is discounting its already low prices over Christmas by 20 per cent for stays of at least four nights, starting on December 23.

For example, Bryn Gwynant coach house, which sleeps 30 and is set on a lakeside in Snowdonia, costs £983.20 for four nights. This works out at £8.19pp per night if you fill it.

Note: Flight prices include all taxes. Hotel prices are per double/twin per night for two people, including breakfast

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