This is the time of year when I feel an almost physical tug in the direction of Johannesburg.  With the advent of December, one starts to think about Christmas plans, and for me there is no better place to spend Christmas than the Big Guava.

I lived in Johannesburg for 15 years and every year the same thing would happen:  round about December 15 the city would empty as if someone had pulled the plug.  If you got up early on the morning of the 16th, you would see the cars and caravans leaving the city for the coast like a procession of army caterpillars.  They would leave behind them a functioning, sophisticated city that you could have all to yourself.

Johannesburg as a holiday destination is bliss.  The turbulent spring weather settles at Christmas and every day has the freshness of early summer.  Mornings are cool, the sun a promise of warmth later on, the air lightly scented with the flowering creepers that hang helplessly over every suburban wall, and the trees are still clothed in the remnants of jacaranda purple.  

Perhaps you would like to head north to the shopping malls to do some Christmas shopping.  The roads, of course, are clear of heavy traffic and the intersections are unpopulated.  Through the open car windows you get the scent of freshly mown lawn as you drive through the heavily leafed suburbs.  And there is always plenty of parking at your destination.

Every shopping outlet is hung with tinsel, lights, fake snow, and Santa on his reindeer-sleigh looking ridiculously overdressed.  No matter how much of a Scrooge you are, you can’t help but get a tingle of anticipation when the shopping grottoes have obviously gone to so much trouble to encourage you to spend.  Many decades of retail research are now at your disposal to make every purchase a pleasure.  It’s all laid on for you at Christmas – and nowhere more skilfully than in Johannesburg!

Perhaps you will have lunch at a pavement café or a garden restaurant.  The waiters are more than usually attentive, with their eye on their festive season tip.   The menu is summer salads and fruits – great juicy peaches, plums, nectarines, apricots and grapes.  

But perhaps you haven’t gone shopping and have rather opted to stay at your hotel, with windows open to catch the breeze.  It is now warm enough for a swim – the only drawback being that visitors are usually unused to the strength of the sun and falling asleep on a towel is a shortcut to painful sunburn.  

Of course, this is only relevant to those who are on holiday, but even the poor corporate slaves who are still chained to the office will have some relief:  a lack of traffic congestion; a freer spirit at work, the chance of knocking off a little earlier, the long evenings and longer opening times of shops and, of course, the looming anticipation of at least a few days off.

There are an extraordinary number of things to do in Johannesburg.  Art tours, heritage tours, Gold Reef City, parks and pavement strolling, craft and produce fairs, exhibitions and parades – one can spend weeks going from one to the other.  The highlight of any afternoon, however, is the scheduled thunderstorm.

This businesslike heap of clouds builds up from lunchtime, and by 4pm the far-off lightning flashes, thunder rumbles and the first drops fall and sizzle in the dust.  Then rain hammers on the roof (corrugated iron produces the best sound effect), rivulets of water start to run along the pavements, the streets steam as the water hits the hot tar.  This light-and-sound show lasts for about half an hour, with as much drama as can be packed in (perhaps including a cameo performance by some hail) and then clears away.  The clouds part like curtains, the rain diminishes to a drip, the sun comes out and turns the wet roads to steam, a rainbow puts a pot of gold right on the other side of the garden wall and the air smells as if it has been freshly ironed.

Now’s the time to take a walk in a nearby park to feed the ducks and to think about the evening that still lies ahead.

Because the best of Johannesburg is its night life.  And over Christmas the night life is as good as, if not better than, any other big city in the world.  Bars and nightclubs are a fixture, but the best is the family entertainment.  There’s Carols by Candlelight at Zoo Lake, the famous Janice Honeyman annual pantomime (this year it is Robinson Cruise-ou and the Caribbean Pirates – a glorious mish-mash of comedy, satire and cheek from a world-famous director).  The Nutcracker ballet is an annual tradition, there are various switchings-on of public Christmas trees, and musical standards like Umoja.  

I have always blessed the architect of the Hillbrow Tower for giving Johannesburg its unique skyline, best seen while approaching from the north.  But even though travelling towards Johannesburg is exciting all year round – it really is Africa’s premier city – it is even more exciting at Christmas when the whole city sparkles like a Christmas carpet of light.