Christmas cheer came to Crown Glass Shopping Centre at Nailsea on Friday night, Novermbee 14, for the switching-on of the festive lights.

Hundreds of people packed Somerset Square and Crown Glass Place for the festivities – and guess what it was snowing!

Mingling with the crowd was an oompah band, colourful clowns, nightwatchman on stilts, cartoon characters, the new mascot and most importantly the princesses and snowman from Frozen.

But the most Very Important Person to put in an appearance was Father Christmas who came along with his helpful elves.

Four-year-old competition winner Oli Mortimore officially turned on the Christmas lights at 6.30pm.

Oli named a giant bumble bee Honeysuckle which is the new child-friendly emblem of the shopping centre.

Four fun clowns called Bluey, Crump, Marco and Dominic entertained by performing magic tricks, blowing up balloons and leading communal singing.

Anna and Elsa chose Georgia, Freya and Ethan as the winners of the best dressed competition.

And everyone agreed it was a wonderful evening with super prizes being given to all the winning children and the town centre tree looking stunning.

Nailsea dad Stuart Burgess, of Chapel Barton, said: "Well done to the organisers, a good event this year."

But among the praise were people calling for the return of the traditional Christmas fair...

The night before Union J was at Cribbs Causway  to turn on its Christmas lights and open its Winter Wonderland.

The foursome - Jaymi Hensley, Josh Cuthbert, George Shelley and JJ Hamblett – came to stardom after appearing in X Factor 2012.

George has lots of North Somerset connections having gone to school locally and with family still living in the area.

His grandparents and mum Toni Harris live at Weston-super-Mare.

George went to schools at Backwell, Nailsea, Clevedon, Burnham and Cheddar before doing a foundation degree course at Weston College and going to Bath Spa University.

The former Golden Valley Primary School pupil comes from a musical family - granddad Dave, a retired policeman, has performed in many bands and still, at the age of 75 plays his accordion at old people's homes.

His uncle Tim and his brother Tom are drummers and his uncle John is a singer/songwriter, while mum Toni who also plays the guitar and writes her own songs used to perform regularly at pubs, clubs and folk festivals.

Union J is set to release its latest single You Got It All this month.

The song written by Magic! lead singer Nasri is the second single from Union J's upcoming second studio album You Got It All (2014).

The teen pin-ups are also appearing in the Christmas advertisement for supermarket chain Morrisons singing its festive ad song which features on the flip side called It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas.

While TV presenters Ant and Dec lead the singing of the Perry Como original in the ad which makes its screen debut this week  it will the fab four who make it a chart topper.

Click on Union J featuring The Vamps image to pre-order the record.

Go to the What's On page by clicking here for more dates in the countdown to Christmas by clicking HERE.

Go to the gallery to view all the Christmas photos by clicking HERE.