Fenwick's Christmas window: dates and what to expect

Newcastle's unofficial start to Christmas is about to happen again. The Fenwick Christmas window reveal has been going since 1971, and this year's theme is 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', illustrated by Chris Riddell, the British writer, illustrator and political cartoonist who was Children's Laureate from 2015 to 2017. The story follows Foggy, a determined partridge who wants to grow his pear tree, and takes you through scenes like Santa's Design Studio and the Secret Workshop. The characters move with traditional mechanical movement, and the whole thing is set to a version of 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' performed by the Tyneside folk band The Unthanks.

The big reveal is on Sunday 1 November at 6.30pm for invited guests, and the public can see it from Monday 2 November. If you want to be there in person, Fenwick runs a ticket ballot for 150 free family tickets, each for four people, which opened on Thursday 8 October and closed at 11.59pm on Thursday 15 October, with winners notified by email that same day. If you didn't get one, the reveal is streamed live on Fenwick's YouTube and Instagram channels at 6.30pm on the Sunday, so you can still catch it from your sofa. Once it's up, the display stays on Northumberland Street until early January, so there's plenty of time to make a proper trip of it.

It's worth knowing who's behind the scenes. Chris Riddell was born in Cape Town in 1962, studied illustration at Brighton Polytechnic, and spent the 1980s as a political cartoonist for The Economist before joining The Observer in 1995. He was awarded an OBE in 2019 for services to illustration and charity and is well known for co-creating The Edge Chronicles with Paul Stewart and illustrating Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book, The Sleeper and the Spindle and Odd and the Frost Giants. The soundtrack comes from The Unthanks, a Tyne and Wear folk group that went by Rachel Unthank and the Winterset until 2009, now made up of Rachel Unthank, Becky Unthank, Niopha Keegan, Adrian McNally and Chris Price. They've put out 14 records, with their latest, In Winter, released on 29 November 2024, and they also composed the soundtrack for the 2019 Worzel Gummidge series.

If you're planning to build a day around it, the store itself is a Victorian building at 39 Northumberland Street, one of the region's biggest designer department stores across five floors. There's a Food Hall with thirteen eateries, including a delicatessen, the Porterhouse Butcher and Grill and Café Filto for afternoon tea, and the Fenwick Beauty Hall, the largest beauty offering outside London, with Charlotte Tilbury, Chanel and Clinique. Opening hours are 9am to 7pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 9am to 8pm on Thursdays and 10.30am to 5pm on Sundays, with a 30-minute browsing time. It closes on bank holidays, so plan around that. For anything else, the number is 0191 232 5100.