Christmas lights in London come in all shapes and sizes. There are the bright beams of Oxford Street, the OTT extravaganza of the Churchill Arms pub, and the angelic display over Regent Street. But what about the highest Christmas lights in town? Well, that honour goes to the Shard, which wheels out a new colourful display every year to act as a beacon of festivity across the capital. In fact, the display at London’s tallest building is also Western Europe’s highest festive display of its kind!
For 2024, they’ve returned with a rotating light show that pays homage to the nation’s love of Christmas carols. It takes the four most beloved carols by Brits (as found in a new study), and presents four 15-minute sequences that rotate through the hour. The nation’s favourite carol? Why, that’s We Wish You A Merry Christmas, of course.
The red and white lights from the upper floors of the Shard invoke the spirit of the carol, alongside the other colourful displays. The other displays draw inspiration from Jingle Bells, The Twelve Days of Christmas, and Deck the Halls.
A record-breaking Christmas light switch-on
And since the lights are inspired by carols, who better to switch them on than choirmaster Gareth Malone OBE? And, naturally, he couldn’t very well do so without a choir of his own.
Malone led a six-person choir in a record-breaking rendition of We Wish You a Merry Christmas. They performed all the way up in the uppermost portion of the Shard, within the exposed spire of the building. Perched 78 storeys above the ground, they broke the record for the highest-ever Christmas carol recital on top of a building. They were a whopping 867 feet above sea level!
If you fancy checking out the display atop the Shard, you won’t have to look far. The twinkling light show takes over the top 20 storeys of the building as they play through the night. They’re even visible from as far as 40 miles away!