Capturing the true essence of Christmas, Lapland is the perfect place to take your family for the holiday period. Situated in the arctic regions of northern Sweden, Finland and Norway, there are a villages in each country around where you can enjoy the full festive experience.

The Belgian photographer Anton Kusters spent two years photographing the Yakuza, Japan’s most notorious gang. He returned with some amazing images that he made into a book called “Odo Yakuza Tokyo”. (Odo means “the way of the cherry blossom” and is the credo of the Yakuza family he followed. Photo: An erotic danser picks up fake 2-dollar bills during a private dance with a Yakuza customer in a strip tease bar in Kabukicho, a bar which is controlled by the ODO family – 2010. (Photo and caption by Anton Kusters)

A breeder puts a giant panda cub into a crib at Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan province, September 23, 2013. Fourteen new joiners to the 128-giant-panda-family at the base were shown to the public on Monday, according to local media. (Photo by Reuters/China Daily)

A Guinean kid poses for a photo in Conakry, Guinea on July 23, 2021. Children, most of whom start working after a certain age to support their families, have their hair braided in different ways and decorated with colorful beads on all special days, especially on holidays, despite these difficult conditions. (Photo by Ozkan Bilgin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Mohammed Al-Shinbari, 24, balances objects using what he calls a mix of mind and body, in his family house in Beit Hanun town in the northern Gaza Strip, 30 November 2019. Al-Shinbari says he can put almost any object in balance. (Photo by Mohammed Saber/EPA/EFE)

A three-year-old girl smokes a cigar during the Saint Simon celebrations in San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, on October 28, 2019. Thousands believe that the saint helps people find work, solves family problems and cures illnesses. (Photo by Orlando Estrada/AFP Photo)

A girl feeds the new-born kitten as the family, living in tent city, adopted two kittens, found under the rubble, after 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes hit in Hatay, Turkiye on March 15, 2023. (Photo by Sergen Sezgin/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A Bengal tiger grabs a bag of food belonging to labourers at the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur, India in the first decade of February 2024. The workers were cutting the grass to avoid forest fires in the area. The wild feline, watched on by its family, later dropped the bag without any harm caused. (Photo by Jignesh Patel/Solent news)