Outdoor Christmas light displays bring both joy and now a competitive spirit out in people across the world as Christmas approaches every year. The tradition of lighting the tree with small candles dates back to the 17th century and originated in Germany before spreading to Eastern Europe. The small candles were attached to the tree branches with pins or melted wax. In addition, European Christians used to display a burning candle in the windows of their house that was visible from the outside. The candles in the window indicated to other Christians that the house was a Christian home and that other Christians were welcome to come worship with the residents.
During the 1880 Christmas season, Thomas Edison introduced the first outdoor electric Christmas light display to the world. The lights were on display outside his compound in his Menlo Park Laboratory, which sat near a railway where many people could see it each night. This was the first official outdoor Christmas display that was separate from decorating just the Christmas tree.
Edward Johnson, was Vice-President of the Edison Electric Light Company, had Christmas tree bulbs especially made for him. He displayed his Christmas tree, hand-wired with 80 red, white, and blue electric light bulbs the size of walnuts on December 22, 1882, at his home in New York City. In 1890, strings of lights were mass-produced and department stores began displaying them in Christmas displays in their stores. Public displays of Christmas lights in retail stores and government buildings became more popular in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century and gave way to outdoor displays on homes a few decades later when the electric lights became more affordable.
As the trend took off, it became apparent that lighting up the Christmas tree and house definitely took effort and money. For many people, the only Christmas light display option was to light up the tree with candles, because they could not afford to buy lights. The trees would be displayed for only a couple of days before Christmas, and the candles were only lit for a few minutes at night, a far cry from the elaborate tree and home displays we are familiar with today. People were aware of the fire dangers and kept buckets of water and sand nearby in case the tree caught fire. The lit tree was often placed in front of a window for people outside the house to see.
In 1895, the first White House electrically lit Christmas tree was sponsored by President Grover Cleveland, which brought national attention to the trend. At the time, only wealthy people could afford the cost, which was upward of $300 per season (which would be more than $2,500 in 2021). In 1925 a union of 15 companies in the Christmas light business at the time came together to form a company known as NOMA. The NOMA electric company was the largest Christmas light distributor and survived the Great Depression. In 1968, NOMA stopped producing and distributing Christmas lights and closed its doors because of increasing competition from competitors. However, thanks to NOMA and other competitors that arose, more and more people began to purchase Christmas lights in the 1940s and 1950s as the lights became cheaper, and people started decorating their houses.
With the invention of the mini light in the 1970’s, offering a bright but low-cost and low-wattage lighting source, the U.S. went crazy. In true American fashion, people began decorating houses with huge amounts of lights in a bid to outdo their neighbors and design a bigger and better spectacle than the next person. The LED Christmas light, LED standing for “light-emitting diode”, lasted longer and was more efficient than the mini light. The LED light uses 95% less energy and lasts up to 100,000 hours, making it more efficient than the traditional mini light by a longshot. In addition, LED lights didn’t have the same problem as older Christmas light models where if one light went out the entire strand was done. With LEDs, if one light went out the rest of the strand continued to stay lit (and you could then buy a replacement bulb to fill in the strand).
The history of Christmas lights has been long and eventful and no one knows what will happen next. But one thing is for sure, the future looks bright (really, really bright).
