8 Christmas window displays to inspire you

Christmas is round the corner, and every shop is running about trying to put together a window that will tempt the neighbours whose pockets are ready to be emptied on something they don’t need. A Christmas window is nostalgic and full of cheer at the same time. It carries memories and family occasions with it. A Christmas window ought to stir something in whoever stops to look — the kind of feeling we wouldn’t understand for the other eleven months of the year.

I remember being eighteen and selling door to door in Madrid. I was walking back one Christmas Eve at eight in the evening, through the Barrio de Salamanca — a well-off part of town — having sold absolutely nothing. I was heading, none too cheerfully, to Príncipe Pío to catch the coach home to Segovia. I remember that night perfectly, six years ago now, because the lights in the shop windows, many of them with buskers outside playing carols, gave me a feeling of homesickness and of warmth all at once. Every gloomy thought I had turned towards God, my family, my friends, and all those things that make you feel part of something. Those windows, put together with real care by shopkeepers who loved what they did, gave me back something of the gladness that Christmas is supposed to have.

That’s why I set such store by Christmas windows. They don’t only have to sell and draw people in — they have to carry something with them.

Walking round Madrid this year I’ve seen very few windows that left me with that particular feeling. In fact I can’t remember the last time I saw several Christmas windows that really took hold of me and pulled me inside the shop without asking. This has to change. And if you’re one of the shopkeepers who hasn’t put a window together yet, here’s your chance to leave every passer-by staring and every competitor green with envy.

So I’ve picked out a set of windows with a proper winter and Christmas feel to them. Here we go:

1 The Queen window in Toronto

There’s a rule about writing articles that romantics like me break easily: you save the best for the end. I couldn’t help following my instincts rather than my reason, so I wanted to show you first the most endearing and carefully made window I could find.

It’s from the Queen chain. In it you can see the whole machinery of set design at work, out to charm children and adults alike, dropping us into a scene as Christmassy as Santa’s own gift workshop. The elves are there in exhaustive detail, working away surrounded by presents of every sort. I love it. I’d press my face to that glass for hours.

2 The Gant window in London

Gant is one of those well-regarded clothing labels that has made a habit of stopping people in their tracks with beautifully made windows. The scene here works because it feels familiar — it could be a still from a Hollywood romantic comedy.

3 The Hudson’s Bay window

This chain has long since got us used to windows you could dream in. This time they’ve gone for something more wintry than strictly Christmassy, and without setting out to sell anything in particular beyond the name itself. As you can see in the photographs, they’ve tried to give the scene depth by using a television screen as the backdrop.

It isn’t altogether a Christmas window, but I liked it so much I couldn’t leave it out. There’s something welcoming about it that sets me dreaming of adventures in the snow.

4 The Holt Renfrew window

Holt Renfrew don’t let the standard slip either. What we have here is a very simple composition that nonetheless carries a great deal of feeling, and what it asks of the passer-by is to see themselves in the scene.

There’s a line of people in the snow — heading to the nativity, perhaps? — playing instruments, thoroughly caught up in it. I liked it because it makes me feel like one more in that line. I’d love to be inside that scene. I can’t help having a weakness for windows that tell a story.

5 The John Lewis window

As I say, I love windows that tell a story. This time John Lewis have told me a Christmas story that takes me straight back to being a boy. I remember a book I had a wonderful afternoon with one autumn when I didn’t feel like studying. It was called “Fantastic Mr Fox“, and it was about a family of foxes living in a burrow while a set of bad-tempered farmers waited outside to see whether one of them would come out and get shot at. Well, the John Lewis window recreates the scene where the fox family celebrate Christmas in their cosy hole in the ground. I find it captivating.

6 The Fortnum & Mason window

One of my favourites. Not only for how involved it is, but because it sets aside the abstract and makes Christmas something you can point at. I also like that they’ve worked in a baroque frame complete with a plump little cherub. The scene of the children asleep in their father’s armchair, the fire lit, waiting for Father Christmas, could have come straight from the pen of Charles Dickens and the Ghost of Christmas Past.

7 The Harrods window

The Harrods Christmas window is probably the hardest to put together of any here. The staging is straightforward enough, but building — or convincingly imitating — a locomotive and several carriages from the turn of the nineteenth century surely isn’t. It put me in mind of a John Ford western crossed with The Polar Express. I love it, and my imagination runs off with me aboard that train, bound for somewhere happy.

8 The Dolce & Gabbana window

I’ve saved for last the window that holds the most of what Christmas actually means. It isn’t especially inventive, and yet it’s the one with the most feeling in it. It’s a traditional Neapolitan nativity, shown last year in the Dolce & Gabbana windows in Milan. Because Christmas, let’s not forget, is the celebration of the birth of the Saviour.