Tis the season…to get the hell out of Dodge!

If Thanksgiving and Christmas for you are more “Bah! Humbug!” than “Ho, ho, ho!,” take a vacation from it all. Seriously, you can do that.

Not everyone looks forward to “the holidays,” especially those living well north of the Equator. The weather turns surly with ice and snow and winds sharp enough to carve the Thanksgiving turkey.

There’s all that hassling with the holiday dinners and the Christmas tree and the Christmas lights and buying and wrapping presents and mailing Christmas cards and…you get the idea.

There are folks who absolutely love all that stuff. If you happen not to be one of them, you need to give some serious thought to readjusting your thinking — and your vacation calendar.

Because winter can be a great time for a major vacation getaway, especially if you also happen to be a baseball fan.

Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic all offer winter–league baseball, and the four of them annually play a round– championship called the Serie del Caribe. You’ll see lots of future stars, but more than a few major leaguers, as well.

The Dominican team in particular usually as the look of a major–league all–star team. Use one of the the DR’s all–inclusive resorts as a base and you have yourself a mellow — and fairly cheap — tropical vacation.

There are even more advantages if you go this route in Puerto Rico, which has lots of beautiful tropical scenery to enjoy, and plenty of historic sites and a glitzy nightlife in San Juan.

With it being a U.S. territory officially, as much English is spoken there as Spanish. And if you’re an American citizen, you won’t need your passport to go there.

Rather not wait until winter to get your game on? There’s always the Arizona Fall League. The crack of the bat, the swirl of the margarita, and a nearly total absences of crowds on weekday games.

If you get nostalgic for winter, just turn on The Weather Channel on your hotel TV at the end of the day and check out the minus–degree temperatures back home — if only to get in a few smug laughs before you head off to take a dip in the pool!

Not into baseball? Not a problem, and you don’t have to be into skiing or snowboarding.. There are plenty of reasons to see London or Paris or Rome in the winter months.

Airfares and lodging costs often are cheaper in the winter, especially in the off–peak weeks. The price of admission to major attractions also may be lower.

Another advantage — MUCH shorter lines of people waiting to get into to major sights like the Tower of London or the Louvre. Often, there are no lines at all.

Hey, if you’re going to be cold, anyway, you might as well get something out of it, right?

But who says you have to be cold?

If you really want to turn winter on its head, find a vacation spot below the Equator, where their seasons are the opposite of ours. Our summer months are their winter, our fall their spring, and so on.

Shorts and short sleeves on Christmas Eve? Believe it!

A place like Buenos Aires, a beautiful, historic city with the atmosphere of Europe and prices closer to those of Mexico but without the public safety issues, could turn winter into your favorite time of year.