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Singaporeans not impressed by Orchard Road Christmas lights

The Christmas lights are on in Orchard Road but some Singaporeans are less than impressed.

Perhaps it is a result of economic uncertainty or planners have run dry of brighter ideas.

But local shoppers are not buying whole-heartedly into this year's slightly austere Yuletide

decorations on the premium retail strip - a sight-seeing highlight for decades now.

In previous years, taxi driver Lim Cheng Kim would make multiple trips into the shopping district just to see the lights. Not so, this year.

"I get the sense that decorations have been 'deproving' year after year," says Madam Lim, 50, in Mandarin.

"I don't feel as compelled to return to take photographs of the lights any more. I do miss the elegance of the decorations in the past."

The current theme, with its red-and- gold lights, also reminds her too much of the upcoming Chinese New Year, in two months' time.

Legal secretary Elliana Taye, 24, says that while this year's lights are not ugly, those from previous years "were nicer as they were more Christmassy".

She went on to highlight the blue and silver-based decorations of last year, which were memorable as they encapsulated a "white Christmas".

This year's light-up, with the theme Christmas On A Great Street, was launched by President Tony Tan Keng Yam last month. It starts nightly at 7pm till Jan 6.

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