Christmas in London 2024

Happy holidays to everyone in 2024! Just like last year, I am posting this on New Year's Eve as I had a very busy Christmas as always. Ever since 2019, I have been going with my mother to see the Christmas lights and decorations in London, and ever since 2021, I've been blogging about what I've seen and taken photos of there. This year was no different, though we did have a longer day due to a Christmassy trail that we had to start off with.

We started out with Wild in Art's Penguin Parade round the Fleet Street Quarters. I always love visiting Wild in Art trails, and this was a perfect way to get warmed up for our evening walk. There were twelve penguin statues overall with all sorts of creative designs, including one designed to look like a kingfisher! This one here is modelled on Buddy the Elf.

Buddy the Elf Penguin, painted by Megan H Smith-Evans.

This is the kingfisher one I mentioned. It combines the build of a penguin with the design of a kingfisher in order to create a "kinguin".

Kevin the Kinguin, painted by Caroline Daly.

This one has different cats and dogs dressed up in Christmas attire.

Santa Paws, painted by Jessica Perrin.

After doing the trail, we set off for Piccadilly. Fortnum & Mason's, as always, did not fail to impress with its magnificent window displays. I am sadly unable to display all of them here despite them all being amazing, but I will show some of my favourites. Here's one involving two pelicans for instance, with some mice watching them.

Here's one with a Christmas crocodile having its nails painted by a mouse.

The mice also pop up in this window display with a reindeer wearing a scarf.

As you can probably tell from the way the windows of Fortnum & Mason are lit up here, we came on the 3rd December.

After this, we went into Waterstone's for an afternoon drink. The hot chocolate did not have whipped cream and marshmallows this time round, but we did have an amazing ginger swirl. Utterly sticky on the fingers and truly delicious.

Afterwards, we went round the children's section of the library for a bit. The Christmas tree was in a different spot to where it has been for the last few Christmases, but it still had the nice decorations on it including the lollipops.

When we had finished browsing Waterstone's we headed out to continue our journey. Piccadilly had the same angel models as before, but they seemed to have cut back on them so there were only two that we saw this year. Regent's Street was pretty the same as well, without any of the angel models removed. I will only show a picture from Regent's Street that I took from a different angle this year since they tend to be the same every year and the Piccadilly ones came out rather blurry.

I'm not sure what street this was, but I liked the phrase and design of the lights here.

Soho had the lights designed by the children again. I wasn't able to see all of them, though I would have loved to as they were some of the best Christmas lights in London this year. Here's one design involving a robin.

And here's one of a Christmas dog.

Carnaby Street wasn't up to the same standard as it has been for the past few years. It mainly consisted of golden cuboid shapes, and though they looked nice, I was still hoping for something like the marine animals or insects from previous years. That said, there were still some good decorations involved in it, including this shape.

They also had some nice Christmas trees on the side including this one.

Liberty's seemed to have a rather divisive window display this year, with it being inspired by the Wicked film that came out recently. One woman who passed by was particularly outraged by this display, though I couldn't help but end up loving its appearance. This window I thought was gorgeous with Glynda being made from pink flowers and Elphaba being made from green ferns.

This window next to it also went with the floral themes.

I thought this window display looked pretty good. I don't remember what the shop was, but I just thought that it was a nice message.

Next to it was this pile of presents with some model houses within it.

Oxford Street had the same stars as always, but John Lewis was decorated with giant snowball shapes.

The window displays were very creative this year. Here is one featuring a giant snowballs with toys stuck to it.

This one features a giant advent calendar with toys next to it.

Here's a close-up of some of the toys in the window display, along with a toy mouse hidden in the advent calendar. Apologies for any blurriness.

Selfridge's usually varies in its quality of window displays, but this one had to be one of their best. One of the windows featured a colour display that was clearly evoking Wicked (just like Liberty's), but everything else was incredibly Christmassy. The stalactites here remind me of some of the art installations by the artist Pip & Pop. ^_^

This window display in particular won me over, especially thanks to the squirrels in it. You cannot go wrong with those creatures in my mind, especially if they're the red variety. Here's a photo of the squirrels up close.

Here are some jazzy Christmas trees in one of the displays here.

The side of Selfridge's had some rather surreal and colourful designs in its windows. Here is one of them.

We had to pop into Marks & Spencer's for a bit to get some Christmas shopping, which meant that there was stuff inside to take photos of as well. This year, M&S had a thing for snowmen built with disco balls, and Piccadilly had one of the most impressive displays of it with this snowman inside a giant snowglobe.

After passing some more decorations and Christmas trees on the streets that I am sadly unable to post due to there being too many people near them to crop out, we finally headed back from another satisfying walk. We weren't able to see what London Waterloo had for its giant Christmas tree this year due to having to visit different stations in order to do the trail earlier that day, but the trail itself more than made up for it.

Anyway, I hope everyone has enjoyed whatever December holiday they celebrate normally, whether it's Christmas like I do or something else. Above all, I wish everyone a happy new year and I hope I'm able to do another one of these blog posts at the end of 2025! :D