Fenwick unveils Christmas window display online and gets over 600,000 views

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Fenwick unveiled its Christmas window display on Sunday night on Facebook and racked up over 670,000 views within 24 hours.

The event, which normally draws a small crowd in Newcastle’s Northumberland Street, this year attracted approximately half a million people to the first ever virtual reveal.  

The window unveiling has been a festive favourite for almost 50 years but because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic - like many other Christmas events - was forced online. 

This year’s theme of “Wind in the Willows” featured the book’s much-loved characters; Ratty, Mole, Badger, Toad and Mouse.

In a statement on its website, the brand said: “We are delighted to welcome the Wind in the Willows...as was revealed virtually to hundreds of thousands of eager viewers from Copenhagen to California, and Beirut to Blyth.”

The event happened on Sunday 8 November via a Facebook Live, which attracted over 30,000 comments. The brand said it wanted to extend a “heartfelt thank you” to all those who joined. 

By Monday afternoon the video has been watched over 678,000 times.

“Fenwick is underpinned by community and family, so being able to bring a little Christmas cheer into so many homes and hearts brings our hard working teams a huge amount of joy”.  

The store's Christmas window display has been an annual event since 1971 and the unveiling event normally attracts around 2,000 people.  

The window previously has been themed around Gulliver’s Travels (1984), a Christmas circus (1986), Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (1998) and The Snowman (2005 and 2018). 

Kieran McBride, store director, told the BBC that work on planning the window display started in February this year.

Customers are being advised not to make a special trip to see the window currently, as England remains in lockdown until Wednesday 2 December at the earliest.

This means all non-essential retailers have had to close their doors, as well as pubs, restaurants, gyms and other locations like hairdressers.

Boris Johnson said in a speech on 31 October: “I am under no illusions about how difficult this will be for businesses which have already had to endure hardship this year. I am truly, truly sorry for that.

“And as I have said before I am optimistic that this will feel very different and better by the spring.”