2023 marks the 40th anniversary of the annual Orchard Road festive light-up.
The annual Orchard Road Light-Up has started! Once again, Singapore’s most famous shopping stretch is adorned with fairy lights and fanciful Christmas trees. The Singaporean Yuletide season has officially begun and it’s time to get merry for the year-end!
This year’s light-up is also doubly special and not just because there’d be multiple Christmas villages from late November till after the New Year. (The final one ends on Jan 7). It’s the 40th anniversary of “Christmas on a Great Street.” Yup, Orchard Road has been dressing up for the holiday season for 40 years now. Four decades of festive creativity and new concepts, with malls and hotels ever competing to put better and more eye-catching designs each year too.
You know, I’m actually old enough to remember the earliest light-ups in the 80s, those bygone years when the street lights were all incandescent instead of cool blue, and when Christmas trees were all traditional and much, much less towering in sizes. I remember badgering my parents to drive down Orchard Road too, and them fuming later because of the traffic jams, while I stared wide-eyed at all the twinkling lights.
How time flies? And how much the light-up has changed. With all the illumination events we are having each year nowadays, I guess some Singaporeans might no longer consider the Orchard Road Light-Up anything special. To them, it’s probably just another touristy event that comes and goes every year.
But this light-up will always feel special to me. Because I’ve visited all 40 editions of it. And because I genuinely love to stand under those fanciful lights every December.
Here’s looking forward to more magical Christmases at the Great Street, year after year.
Christmas on a Great Street 40th Edition
Merry Christmas in advance, everybody!
Orchard Road Light-Up 2023 ends on Jan 1, 2024. The first Christmas village at Shaw House starts on Nov 24, 2023.
Other festive celebrations in Singapore
