There was much umming and ahing before Oxford Street installed its first Christmas lights back in 1959.
The worry was that suspending oversized decorations above the heads of millions of passing Londoners could prove dangerous. The concerns were soon founded. That year, a man was killed by a toppling decoration.
A new Channel 5 documentary, The Oxford Street Christmas Lights: Then & Now, is sprinkled with pub-worthy trivia. Did you know that there were Christmas light sightseeing buses as early as the 1960s? Or that the plunger/switches used by celebrities to turn on the lights aren't actually connected up to anything?
Featuring enchanting black and white footage of early light displays, to that of the much-grumbled-about 'Tis the Season to be Tango'd' lights of 1998, this is a breezy watch of a documentary fortified with genuinely interesting personalities, including Paul Dart, designer of the already iconic 'Spirit of Christmas' angels, which have swooped over Regent Street since 2016.
Speaking of which. Despite the documentary's name, this is really a tale of two streets. Regent Street was way ahead of the game, turning on the first lights in the country in 1954. The following year, it introduced the first cross-street decorations — a flurry of glimmering snowflakes, illuminated using recycled aircraft landing lights. (Who said eco-friendly lighting was anything new?)
So began a festive arms race between the neighbouring commercial thoroughfares, leading to the first celeb switch-ons in 1981 (Regent Street saw Oxford Street's Miss World, and raised them a Princess Di). The fever pitch of the mid-1990s — when the economy was booming, and the Spice Girls flicked the switch in front of half a million fans — have long dimmed. In 2024, the public weren't even invited to the switch-on. But we should at least thank our lucky stars we're no longer in the illumination wilderness of the late 60s through to the late 1970s, when Christmas lights were scrapped in central London altogether (hard to fathom, isn't it?). Oxford Street's lights finally made a comeback in 1978, with a bold (and ill-advised) Star Wars-inspired laser display. As Paul Dart informs us, these industrial strength lasers could easily have blinded people. Thank god, this time, there was no such tragedy.
You can watch The Oxford Street Christmas Lights: Then & Now on Channel 5's website for free (although you'll need to register).
