The Twinkling Lights

Every holiday season, people adorn their Christmas trees, the outside of their houses, trees and bushes outside, fireplace mantles, and other places with strands of little lights. These lights are commonly called "Christmas lights", even though the exact same strands of lights can be and are used for other holidays. But where did these lights come from?

The use of putting a form of light on a tree came in the form of candles in the mid-1600's in Germany. People attached these candles to the tree brances by melting a small amount of wax onto the tree branch and placing the candle on it. Some people also used pins to attach the candles to the branches. Over the next two hundred years, the tradition caught on all across Europe. By the 1890's, the first candleholders were developed for Christmas trees. In some places today, candles are still used. It was only because of the availability of and cheap supply of electricity.

The first documented case of Christmas tree lights on a Christmas tree was at the home of an associate of Thomas Edison in 1882. He had 80 hand-wired light bulbs (each the size of a walnut) on a Christmas tree. The bulbs were colored red, white, and blue. The New York newspapers refused to run an article on the lights, claiming it was a publicity stunt, but other newspapers did, and the idea spread. By 1900, many businesses began using Christmas lights to illuminate their storefronts and windows. The lights were too expensive for several years for the average person, so candles were still used by most US citizens until after 1930.

Christmas lights used outside is a bit more of a contentious issue. There were recorded instances of using Christmas lights outside dating back to 1904, but the idea of decorating evergreen trees outside is credited to McAdenville, North Carolina in 1956. However, that same year, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree began using electric lights, and so did Philadelphia's Christmas Light Show. The Library of Congress credits McAdenville as being the first, but not everyone agrees. Either way, the use of outside lights for the average household didn't begin until the mid-1950's when the prices became cheap enough.

One other story about Christmas lights is about fairy lights. In London in 1882, the Savoy Theatre's opening night of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Iolanthe" was a historical one. The previous year, the Savoy became the first building in the world to be lit entirely by eletricity. In keeping with that motif, Richard D'Oyly Carte (the owner of the Savoy) equipped a number of the fairies in the play with light bulbs supplied by the Swan United Electric Lamp Company, the same company that supplied the lights for the theatre the previous year. The term fairy lights was born. To this day, what we call a string of electric Christmas lights in America is commonly called fairy lights in England.

Bet you didn't know that!