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Ingenuity meets Festivity: The Birth of Christmas Lights

Before electric Christmas lights were invented, people depended upon candlelight to illuminate their Christmas trees. As you might imagine, the practice of putting lighted candles onto a cut evergreen tree caused more that its share of fires. That hazard began to get a whole lot safer in the year 1882, when the first Christmas tree was set aglow with the aid of electricity. A man by the name of Edward H. Johnson invented the first Christmas tree that was illuminated by electricity. Johnson, who was an inventor and an associate of Thomas Edison, came to be known as the “Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights.” On December 22, 1882, he proudly displayed his electrically lit Christmas lights on his tree at his home on Fifth Avenue in New York City.

In 1895, Christmas lights came to the White House, when President Grover Cleveland lit the first electrically illuminated tree with more than 100 lights on it of various colors. By the first part of the next century, Christmas lights began to appear outdoors in cities like San Diego and New York City. However, it still took many years before electric Christmas lights began making an appearance on famous Christmas trees like the ones at Rockefeller Center in New York and Disney’s Christmas tree. Within a few years after Christmas tree lights became more commonplace, Christmas lights began showing up in other areas as well, such as strung along mantles or doorways or outlining the rafters of houses.

Christmas Lights Today

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christmas lights have become a work of art in themselves, with new ways of displaying their illumination getting invented all the time. The incandescent lights that many of us grew up with are now being replaced in many homes with the more efficient and reliable LED Christmas lights. A number of years ago, bubble lights were all the rage. These lights featured long glass tubes with colored liquid bubbling within. This style of holiday lights peaked in popularity around the 1950’s, but you can still find versions of the bubble Christmas lights in stores today. They have become popular for a retro Christmas theme for many holiday decorators.

No matter what types of Christmas lights you decide to use, or how you decide to use them, this holiday tradition has become a staple in many homes today. In fact, it would hardly seem like Christmas without a few strands of Christmas lights twinkling throughout the home and neighborhood.

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