The light show at the unveiling of the Saks Fifth Avenue Carousel of Dreams holiday display in 2023.
Credit...Adrienne Grunwald for The New York Times

Saks Fifth Avenue Calls Off Holiday Light Show

The department store is canceling an annual show that has long drawn tourists to its flagship store in New York City.

by · NY Times

A light show that drew thousands of tourists and holiday shoppers each winter — with blinking, swirling, exploding spectacles that seemed to be growing more elaborate every year — is no more.

Or, at least, it’s not happening this year.

Saks Fifth Avenue has confirmed that it will not offer the popular light show at its flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan this holiday season, in what appears to be a move to cut costs. The news began appearing on social media early this week, and was based on employees’ accounts.

In confirming the decision, a representative for Saks told The New York Post on Monday that it had been a “challenging year for luxury.”

The store said in a statement that it instead planned to celebrate the centenary of its flagship store by “honoring the architectural significance of this iconic building, elegantly illuminating the facade and framing the holiday windows.”

Along with the department store’s vaunted holiday windows, the light show had for nearly two decades drawn crowds to 611 Fifth Avenue, with many visitors pairing the show with a nighttime stop at the nearby Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.

In the statement, a spokeswoman for Saks Fifth Avenue noted that “for some time, we have contemplated changing our approach.” Yet the decision appeared to have been made recently, with a news release from October including a mention of the light display, noting that like the celebrated Saks holiday windows, the display would be “presented by Mastercard.”

It was not clear whether the decision to call off the light show represented a pause, or an end to the tradition, but Saks confirmed that it was not related to the company’s relationship to Mastercard.

The annual light show, which began in 2004, was typically unveiled in late November and ran through early January. The display was timed to repeat every few minutes.

In its early years, the show involved a similar display every holiday season. Massive snowflakes projected onto the store’s facade appeared and disappeared as Christmas music played. By 2010, the display grew more sophisticated, with bubbles that appeared to emerge from the store windows and float up the front of the building.

For several years, the display turned the store into a blinking castle, its pillars and spires changing color every several seconds under a fringe of icicles. Even during the pandemic, the show went on.

In 2022, as part of a collaboration with the Elton John AIDS Foundation, the show involved rocket ships, kaleidoscopic images and the musician himself playing “Your Song” at the unveiling.

Last year, in a partnership with Dior, the store created a so-called Carousel of Dreams with zodiac signs on a disc that pulsed with lights and appeared to spin like a roulette wheel, as music played and fireworks shot into the sky.

Money was no object then, or so it seemed.

On social media this week, many wondered about the company’s decision to call off the light show precisely on the flagship store’s 100th anniversary. “What better year to make an extravaganza?” said KaVonna Holloway, the host of “The Introvert’s Social Hour” podcast.

“That’s what people expect every year,” Ms. Holloway said in a video on TikTok. “And you say, ‘No, we’re not going to do it. We’re going to highlight the window displays.’ Nobody wants that.”

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