By Brooke Mills
Something that is absolutely wonderful about London is that the celebration of Christmas starts in early November. In the U.S. we are forced to wait until after Thanksgiving to begin such things as putting up the Christmas tree or wrapping the streets and buildings in Christmas lights, in London one gets the joy of two months of Christmas spirits. My Christmas in London started on the eighth of November, the day of the lighting of Regents Street Christmas lights.
I have never been to a more extravagant lighting before in the U.S., usually there is just a crowd of people and someone who helped put up the lights turns them on. At Regents Street there was a party, a big spectacular event for the simple act of switching on some lights because for them it was not just switching on some lights it was the beginning of a joyous holiday.
The event began with the singing of Christmas songs by the West End Gospel choir. Christmas songs were a great way to start the event, they really brought the whole crowd together and had everyone singing along, which was truly amazing and made the Christmas spirit really come alive. The next performance was a little less Christmassy but nonetheless fun and entertaining, the cast from the West End musical Thriller came on singing Billy Jean and Man In the Mirror, classic Michael Jackson songs. Being a big fan of Michael Jackson’s music I did not mind the change in musical genre but I did feel it was a little out of place for a Christmas event.
The event also had big performers, Kelly Clarkson and Matt Cardle, who sang their own music instead of traditional Christmas music. I thoroughly enjoyed both performances because I enjoy both Clarkson’s and Cardle’s style on music but I felt to appeal to a wider variety of people it might have been better to sing Christmas songs since it was a Christmas event. One of my favorite parts came in between Clarkson’s and Cardle’s performances, the arrival of Emma Bunton who was helping host and light the Christmas lights, she was once a part of my favorite singing group the Spice Girls and it has sadly always been and still is a dream of mine to meet all of them, so she really made the night for me.
The absolute best part of the night the was the actual lighting of the Regents Street lights, which consist of big bright light blue stars that hang atop your and bright Christmas colored banners promoting “Arthur Christmas”. The lights were extremely beautiful and to top it off there were also fireworks, there are surprisingly a lot of opportunities for one to see fireworks in London.
Overall this event was tremendously well done and I would absolutely go again if they had a similar event. The Regents Street Christmas Lighting event got everyone in the crowd in to the perfect spirits for Christmas.
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