100 Days to Christmas: Household displays offer lessons for place managers planning festive programmes
Today marks 100 days until Christmas, and households and high streets across the UK will soon be dusting off boxes of lights and decorations. But for place managers and policymakers, this milestone is more than a seasonal countdown.
Christmas is a pivotal moment for towns, cities, and high streets: a time when public spaces are transformed, footfall surges, and communities reconnect.
Yet in times of tight budgets, Christmas lights are often among the first things to be cut. Our research shows why that is a false economy.
Research conducted by Prof Tim Edensor and Prof Steve Millington, published in the Journal of Sociology and featured on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed (“Class at Christmas”) and in the Guardian, explored how household Christmas lights reflect identity, belonging, and social life.
Neighbourhoods often developed their own distinctive ‘style’:
- Some embraced minimalism, with soft blue-and-white lights.
- Others chose exuberance, with inflatable Santas, musical sequences, and every colour of the rainbow.
These displays were never just decoration. They reflected identity and taste but also sparked neighbourliness, friendly competition, and even fundraising. For those who went big, Christmas was unapologetically about excess and celebration, creating a festive atmosphere that drew visitors and donations alike.
For place management, Christmas lighting delivers both cultural and economic value.
Boosting high street trade
According to the British Retail Consortium, some retailers take up to 40% of their annual sales in the ‘Golden Quarter’ (October-December), with Christmas trading the single biggest driver. Festive lighting attracts people to town centres, increases dwell time, and supports retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors at their most critical time of year.
Driving perceptions and pride
Well-lit spaces feel safer, more welcoming, and more attractive. This enhances civic reputation, encourages repeat visits, and builds long-term loyalty to a place.
Strengthening community ties
Switch-on events and neighbourhood displays bring thousands together, creating moments of joy and belonging. This civic “glue” is essential for resilient communities.
Lessons for place managers
- Cultivate community identity: Support informal placemaking through coordinated local campaigns. Decorations are visible ways people show pride in their place.
- Enhance visitor experience: Link household displays with town centre events to extend atmosphere and drive footfall.
- Promote inclusive participation: Subsidise community-led lighting, recycling schemes, and collective low-cost activities to ensure everyone can join in.
With 100 days to go, this is the moment for place managers to think not just about the switch-on, but about how festive atmosphere is co-produced by households, communities, and high streets.
Christmas lights may seem like a luxury, but the evidence is clear: they deliver economic uplift, social connection, and community pride. Cutting them risks cutting much more than bulbs and wires — it risks cutting the very atmosphere that keeps people coming back.
For policymakers, BIDs, and local authorities, the challenge is to invest wisely: supporting community-led displays, embedding inclusion into evaluation, and recognising Christmas lights as both cultural assets and economic drivers.
Because when the lights shine, places thrive.
About the author
Formed in 2006, the Institute of Place Management is the international professional body that supports people committed to developing, managing and making places better.