Christmas Shopping In London

London and I very definitely have a love/hate relationship. Some days I would come home feeling that I had been bashed about the head with a saucepan, and yet other days the London magic would work its charm on me. Take Christmas time, for example. London really comes into its own at this time of year – perhaps not exactly replicating a Dickensian Yuletide card, but there is certainly something a little special in the air.   

Surfacing from the tube on the corner of Oxford and Regent street, one late December afternoon, I find that a velvet-like darkness has cloaked the city, but the sky is ablaze with the yellow light from street lamps and loud, brash decorations – the reflections shining back up at me from the wet roads. Rain very often blows in your face, but there is plenty going on to distract you.

The pavements are thronging with crowds, and all the people buzz and whirr like wound up clockwork toys. Some sweep along, focused only on getting home, looking forward to that moment when they can heave a relieved sigh from behind the closed front door. Others meander, enthralled by the Christmas wonderland that rumbles all around them. There is manic activity on all levels – the bowels of the city groan with the rush of trains, and overhead the skies are criss-crossed with jet streams as aeroplanes bring in fresh loads of visitors. As December marches resolutely towards The Big Day, the Christmas frenzy becomes palpable in the air. As the streets become rammed with shoppers, it’s almost as if they have all been cranked up a gear, and they speed around, bashing each other with their shopping bags, exchanging annoyed glances on buses as they struggle to squeeze past each other.

The warm glow of Christmas lights softens the faces of the famous old buildings, giving them a much more genial appearance, and fairy lights dance prettily in the trees. 

The cold, wet air is shot through with Christmas music and sleet; the heavily sweet and pungent scents of roasted honey nuts and chestnuts entwine with decorations that hang off every shop front. Excited school children race and weave, hardly able to contain themselves when they imagine the heap of loot they are hoping to find on Christmas morning.

Tourists, uneducated in the ways of the city, stand on the wrong side of the tube escalators and clog them. ‘Excuse me, but do you know the way to…?’ Red double-decker buses heave and sigh their way rudely through the buzz and hum. They have almost reached a fever pitch in Hamleys, where bubbles pop in the air and resting actors race up and down on scooters to demonstrate their brightly painted charm.

Gorgeous, dreamlike scenes in shop windows vie for your attention, enticing you inside. Once you have entered the hallowed halls, it’s clear to see that the big department stores have magically transformed into sumptuous Meccas of desire, with breathtaking displays of delightful trinkets tempting you from all directions. Fantastical fibreglass women swoon and gaze down at you from their podiums, draped in dazzling clothes that you ache to own. Sleek and elegant gadgets gleam alluringly from their specially lit cabinets. 

Authoritative business men in power suits and elegant ladies who are very practised at shopping flip sparkly plastic cards across counter tops with pleased abandon. They emerge from beautiful shops, laden down with bags emblazoned with logos, and wearily yet happily hail cabs, to whisk them safely back home, as night begins to dampen down the chaos. 

And then, with a surreal suddenness, it all comes to an abrupt end. As dawn peeks out on the morning on the 25th, the bustling streets have fallen oddly silent, and lonely traffic lights, standing amid abandoned roads, change from red to green as if only for their own amusement. But the city seems to be heaving a quiet sigh of relief – that’s it now, until next year.