Christmas in Los Angeles and London

“Never again!” I sigh every January 6, as I pack away the abundance of Christmas decorations lovingly collected over the decades. “It’s too much!” I moan to Percy. “Let’s go to a hot island next year and get away from it all…” But I never do, because I just love Christmas. Every year in early November I eagerly unpack multiple boxes tenderly packed two years earlier because we like to spend Christmas in London one year and in LA the next, as we love both cities. I have quite a lot of extended family in each, so we know that celebrating in either one will be very “happy families.”

But it’s the run-ups to Christmas in each city that are quite different. In the US, everyone celebrates Thanksgiving, which comes at the end of November. To us, that event seems more important than Christmas. At Thanksgiving, the decorations of shop fronts and homes are all turkeys and pumpkins and autumn foliage, following the spooky ghosts and spiderwebs of Halloween (also a major celebration), but the shops are just full of the usual wares. In London, though, it seems that the end of October is the beginning of the Christmas season. By then, most shops have begun to install their Christmas ornaments and Dean Martin and Bing Crosby are singing Christmas songs.

By contrast, in LA, nothing goes up until the first week of December and even then, it’s quite low-key. Wilshire Boulevard, one of the city’s most famous and popular streets, puts up the same tired old garlands, which have mostly lost their sparkle, and most of the big stores and boutiques in Beverly Hills have only muted embellishments, if any at all. How fabulous is London as the days grow shorter and darker? Practically every establishment in the center of the city gleams with glamorous twinkly lights, exquisite adornments and fantastic florals. Every hotel and restaurant in the capital goes out of its way to outdo the others. I thought Claridge’s decor was simply superb, but then we went to dine at the Savoy and it looked like a fairyland, with brilliant snowflake arrangements draped across the walls and ceilings.

Every church in London seems to celebrate the magical season with carol concerts. We attended one at St. James’s Church in Piccadilly, the “Fayre of St James’s,” in aid of Ben Elliot’s charitable foundation for vulnerable children in London. There was a fine group of celebrities – Billy Crudup, Dominic West, Natascha McElhone, Richard E. Grant, Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu (and me!) – who either recited a poem or read a story or sang a song. The church was beautifully yet simply decorated, and the pews chock-full of families, friends and other celebrities. And that’s only one of many similar events in churches all around our beautiful city. It seems the crème de la crème of film and theater decide to step out in the Christmas spirit – Dame Judi Dench in “The Story of Christmas” at St. George’s, Hanover Square, Robert De Niro switching on Stella McCartney’s lights… ahem… the lights in her Bond Street store, of course. Carols too at the Albert Hall, at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. I don’t think LA does anything like this. Angelenos don’t seem to have the same joyful Christmas spirit as we Londoners do. Every street is a wonderland of imaginative celebration. Motcomb Street is lined with glistening fairy lights on lampposts, Elizabeth Street is aflame with flying angels and Oxford Street is so lit up I’m surprised Extinction Rebellion has not come out in protest.

But before I’m accused of denigrating our American cousins, I have to acknowledge that Christmas party invitations in LA flow fast and furious at the end of Thanksgiving. While the local authorities may not splash out, the lawns of private homes – festooned with animated Santas and reindeer gamboling in artificial snow and surrounded by trees overdecorated with more glimmering lights than a transatlantic liner – make up for the paucity of the city streets. And except for London, no one does it better than New York, with the giant Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, lavish street decorations and painstakingly produced windows everywhere.

Both London and LA are home to me at Christmas. And I know that when I fold away this year’s collection of Christmas tchotchkes, muttering “Never again,” a little voice in the back of my head will whisper: “LA next year!”

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.