First of all: Merry Christmas!!!
Hope you’re going to have a beautiful day, full of food and fun!

In order to share our greetings with you all we have: Christmas Light, by Coldplay.

Instead of we wish a smiling christmas for you all, we have chosen a videoclip for “missing lovers”. While radios play all the cheery songs, this is melancholy but also full of hope.

This is the first official Christmas song released by the band as they quote “We love Christmas songs, but every time we try and write one it’s awful. So we cover them. Well, once or twice actually. The one song I would most liked to have written is ‘Fairytale of New York’ by de bloody Pogues of Ireland.”(2010)
The song was released on 1 December 2010, as a digital download. Described by the band as “a mid-tempo number” in the key of G major. The single’s release date was announced through the official Coldplay website on 24 November 2010, they published an hand-written letter, in which they say “Next week at 8 p.m. on Wednesday 1st December we are releasing a new song called “Christmas light”. It will be on iTunes and everything. It is in the key of G”
Moreover a countdown in minutes and seconds to 1 December 8pm GMT, appeared on the homepage of the website, accompanied by an animated GIF of the album art. The cover art is by Yu Matsuoka Pol.

One month before its release, started the discussions about the video. The original plan was to film a simple video at Oxford Street, as the place is mentioned in the song’s lyrics. Another idea included filming at the Willesden Music Hall. Inviting the designer Misty Buckley to the project was the definitively solution.
The location that was chosen for the shooting (just five days before the video’s shooting) was the South Bank, to tie in a line about the meeting of the sea and the city.
Filming began on November 24th. The video appears to be one continuous shot, and while it might have been filmed with a single camera, all we know is that several hours and many takes went into the video.

Millie Proud wrote on her blog about that day:
“In November 2010 I helped on the day of Coldplay’s Christmas Light’s shoot. It was a very very long and cold day, 19 hours in total, 8am until 4am the next day. I don’t think I have ever been so cold in my life. Painting some of the scenery with numb fingers proved to be very difficult. The set was beautifully designed by Misty Buckley and built on the Southbank near the National Theatre. I arrived when the stage looked a bit like the photo above and straight away I felt at home due to the theatrical aspect of the set. It was the exactly to my taste, with the lanterns and layered details. I just loved it. I helped by painting a few details and working on the curtains at the sides of the stage. We dressed the set and then spent most of the time waiting backstage until our big moment – pulling back a piece of scenery on cue..
It was a great day and even though I was so freezing and had about 4 hours sleep that night it was definitely an experience I wouldn’t have missed.”

One hundred fans of the band appear in the music video; they release coloured balloons from a boat on the Thames whilst singing along to part of the song.
“Credo Elvem Etiam Vivere” is written across the top of the stage. In Latin this means “I Believe Elvis Yet Lives”. This is likely connected to the three Elvises appearing in the video, which is connected to the song’s lyrics.

The video was directed by Mat Whitecross, a long-time friend of the band and director of several of Coldplay’s other music videos, such as Bigger Stronger, Lovers in Japan, Every Teardrop Is a Waterfall and more recently, Paradise.

We report some part of an interview made to director Mat Whitecross, you could find the whole one in the Coldplay site, part one and part two:

“All the music halls around town were booked up, for Christmas.And then they suggested getting Misty Buckley involved. […] we came up with the idea of building our own music hall and putting it in a really interesting location. And that was the start of the video that it became. … Chris said we should all come into the Bakery and have a chat about it with the band, and we started brainstorming and watching things online and Misty showed us some of her designs. The band got really excited and said, “Yes! This is what we’re definitely going to do. Let’s start from tomorrow. […] that’s what’s great about working with Coldplay. Whenever I’ve worked with them, they’ll brainstorm and have hundreds of ideas and then you just try and take the best ones and put them into the video. So Chris would just come out with these ideas. Like he’d ring me up in the middle of the night and say, “I really want there to be three Elvises playing strings, in jumpsuits.” I thought he was joking. And then two weeks later, there they were! […] It was his idea to be lying on the floor next to the piano as the beginning of the video. And he wanted some kind of illusion quite early on. So we got in touch with this illusionist. He suggested a few things – some of which just didn’t work with our one shot idea – and we ended up kind of using the levitation idea. […] We talked about doing it in tunnels under Waterloo, then Chris suggested doing it on a rooftop and we managed to secure the roof of John Lewis in Oxford Street. But then Chris thought it’d be good to do it by the river, to tie in with the line about where the sea and city meet. Then we got down to the South Bank – and this is now about five days before the shoot – and he loved it. So it’d gone from being this tiny little video we were going to shoot as mates walking down Oxford Street at midnight, to being something quite huge. That was great, but also borderline terrifying. […] The band and the crew were absolutely lovely and patient, but it was one of the hardest shoots I’ve ever done. […] When we finished that night, because it was such a complicated shoot and we were all freezing – particularly the band and the Elvises who weren’t wrapped up – I really wasn’t sure if we had it right. The band were incredibly patient, though. It was so cold. I think a lot of other bands would’ve just walked.”

“What did you think of the Coldplay fans [recruited via Coldplay fan site Coldplaying] who were on the boat for the Christmas Light shoot?
They were amazing! I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve seen the video and assumed they were a special effect! But it was so beautiful. I think the band were really touched that they turned up and actually did that for real, and that they were patient enough to sit there in the freezing cold and wait for us to get on with it. There’s something quite moving about hearing them singing along to the track. I really like it. They sounded brilliant. “

“There are so many great little touches in the video.
Well, there are even some accidental ones. There’s a cross where the piano is supposed to go from one of the earlier takes, which is next to Chris’s eyes at the start. In a way, it’s those little mistakes that make you realise it’s real. There are quite a few little things like that in there.”

“Did the shoot go smoothly?
Actually, it was a bit of a nightmare. We had problems with the piano and with the crane. But you forget about those things when you watch it.”

Here we have some “making of” and “behind the scene”:
Coldplay interview re Christmas Light and practicing in the studio
Making of part one
Making of part two
Making of part three
And another making of

Oh Christmas lights 
Light
up the street 
Light
up the fireworks in me
May all your troubles soon be gone
Oh Christmas lights keep shining on

Have a great Christmas!