'Firefly' garden, snow shows to jazz up Orchard Rd for Christmas

Annual light-up event will also bring back street party with food trucks, pop-up stalls

- Chin Soo Fang Senior Correspondent

A "firefly" garden, nightly snow shows and a bar-hopping "passport" will be among the new elements at the 2024 Christmas lightup along Orchard Road.

Christmas on A Great Street, the annual light-up organised by the Orchard Road Business Association (Orba), will also bring back the Great Christmas Eve Street Party in 2024.

Stretching 400m from Ion Orchard to Ngee Ann City, it will feature live deejay performances, roving mascots, pop-up stalls and food trucks, as well as a countdown to Christmas.

A section of Orchard Road from the Paterson Road junction to Bideford Road junction will be closed to vehicular traffic from 6pm on Dec 24, as revellers count down to Christmas Day from 8pm.

The road will reopen to traffic from 2am on Dec 25. The party was first held in 2023

and attracted 130,000 revellers.

The good response motivated the association to bring it back in 2024, said Orba chairman Mark Shaw.

Christmas on A Great Street attracted 4.1 million visitors in 2023, 70 per cent of whom were locals while the rest were tourists.

"The event's visitorship has gone back to pre-pandemic levels, and we expect four million to five million visitors this year," said Mr Shaw.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam will officiate the light-up ceremony on Nov 9, which is organised by Orba and Community Chest to raise funds for more than 100 social service agencies running over 200 social service programmes.