The history of Christmas—which, according to history.com, begins with Roman mythology—inextricably connects with the history of artificial illumination. Indeed, lighting Christmas trees with candles was a standard domestic practice in the early 20th century. Decorating a Christmas tree—and, incidentally, just about everything else—with strands of inexpensive, yellow-ish LED mini-lights came into widespread use in the Eighties and Nineties. Multiple sources trace the wonder of colored Christmas lighting to the idea of one man. His name was Edward Johnson. What Mr. Johnson decided to do one Christmas in New York City has brightened the holidays ever since.
According to History.com, Christmas began for all intents and purposes “[i]n Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, [with] Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—[b]eginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month…when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down. For a month, enslaved people were given temporary freedom and treated as equals.”
The chronology of the American Christmas—which soon dominated across the globe—started in earnest in the 19th century. The story “A Visit From St. Nicholas” was published in 1823. Artist Thomas Nast’s depiction of a jolly Santa Claus debuted in 1862. England’s Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, introduced the Teutonic tannenbaum—forerunner to the modern Christmas tree—and the idea spread. America’s Christmas shifted toward centering upon a Christmas tree with a picture of English monarch Albert, the queen, their kids and the tannenbaum which became popular in 1848, according to an article about Christmas tree lighting in Popular Mechanics.
“Shortly after the Illustrated London News ran a picture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert gathered around a lit Christmas tree with their children, British society embraced the tradition. Strangely, in 1850 an altered depiction of the Royal Christmas ran in the influential Godey’s Lady’s Book—removing such details as the Queen’s tiara and Prince Albert’s mustache—where it gained popularity in the States as the first ‘influential American Christmas tree’.”
In 1856, Franklin Pierce erected a tree at the White House. By the 1870s, fresh-cut trees were being sold in New York City’s Washington Square Park and Macy’s stocked unique ornaments. Christmas trees were illuminated by candles, which was a hazard.
Decorating a Tree with Colored Lights Begins
Electrical lighting for the Christmas tree came later, according to an article about Christmas lights by Civil War history author Jamie Malanowksi in Smithsonian magazine. Malanowksi writes that “[w]hen [Thomas] Edison patented the light bulb in 1880, its exact value was hard to gauge; widespread electrification was still decades away. Edward Johnson, Edison and others invested $35,000 to form the Edison Lamp Company to sell the bulbs.”
While Mr. Edison had decided that, instead of decorating a tree, he would string lights around his Menlo Park laboratory with a goal to win a government contract to provide electricity to Manhattan, colored Christmas lights were Edward Johnson’s idea. Invested in Edison’s Electric Light Company, company vice-president Johnson seized an opportunity. Erecting a Christmas tree by his East 36th Street, New York City townhome’s parlor window facing the street, Mr. Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and strung them together around it, placing the trunk on a revolving pedestal, which was powered by a generator. Then, he used a telephone to call a reporter.
“At the rear of the beautiful parlors, was a large Christmas tree presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect,” wrote W.A. Croffut in a Detroit newspaper. “It was brilliantly lighted with…eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue….One can hardly imagine anything prettier.” Mr. Johnson’s colored lights attracted attention along the sidewalk, as people stopped to marvel at the glow behind the home’s upper window glass.
According to Robert McNamara, an article in the newspaper, headlined “A Brilliant Christmas Tree: How an Electrician Amused His Children” reported that:
“The tree was lighted by electricity, and children never beheld a brighter tree or one more highly colored than the children of Mr. Johnson when the current was turned and the tree began to revolve. Mr. Johnson has been experimenting with house lighting by electricity for some time past, and he determined that his children should have a novel Christmas tree…The lights were divided into six sets, one set of which was lighted at a time in front as the tree went round. By a simple devise of breaking and making connection through copper bands around the tree with corresponding buttons, the sets of lights were turned out and on at regular intervals as the tree turned around. The first combination was of pure white light, then, as the revolving tree severed the connection of the current that supplied it and made connection with a second set, red and white lights appeared. Then came yellow and white and other colors. Even combinations of the colors were made. By dividing the current from the large dynamo Mr. Johnson could stop the motion of the tree without putting out the lights.”
Before Edward Johnson and his arduous electrical Christmas tree lighting efforts, candles dominated the tree lights market. As Christmas-related antique collector John Hanssen told Melissa Chan for her article in Time: “Generally, the tree was set up in the parlor and when all the family would come down to see the tree, dad or grandpa would light up all the candles. You’d look at it for a few seconds and blow them out.”
That changed over 100 years ago, Chan reports, when General Electric manufactured, sold and distributed pre-assembled electrical lights. Capitalism made electrical lights cheaper and more accessible, according to historian Kerri Dean.
In turn, electrical lights made the Christmas tree safer, according to an article in Popular Mechanics. In 1917, after “Christmas tree candles caused a tragic New York City fire, a teen by the name of Albert Sadacca thought to repurpose the white novelty lights his family produced, switching them over to colored bulbs and creating the first Christmas lights safe for widespread use in the home.” Eventually, the young enterprising Sadacca founded the NOMA (National Outfit Manufacturer’s Association) Electric Company in 1925. Sadacca’s NOMA became the world’s largest Christmas light manufacturer.
By the 1920s, industrialization made electrical Christmas lights affordable for America’s middle class, Popular Mechanics reports. Demand for new shapes and sizes of lighting displays, “including flowers, snowmen, saints, and even Santa himself,” spiked.
“Thus was born the outdoor light show, which still burns brightly in towns across America. Organized by Frederick Nash in Altadena, Calif., the first public outdoor electric Christmas light display turned Santa Rosa Avenue into Christmas Tree Lane. With the exception of [World War 2], it has been lit continuously every year since. Not to be outdone, in 1923 President Calvin Coolidge [on Christmas Eve] lit the [n]ational Christmas tree with about 3,000 lights.”
A newspaper described the White House scene the next day:
“As the sun sank below the Potomac the President touched a button which lighted up the nation’s Christmas tree. The giant fir from his native Vermont instantly blazed with myriad electrics which shone through tinsels and reds, while those who surrounded this community tree, children and grown-ups, cheered and sang. The crowds on foot were augmented by thousands who came in motor cars, and to the music of the singers was added the discord of horns. For hours the people thronged to the ellipse, which was dark except in the spot where the tree stood, its brilliancy heightened by a searchlight which shed its rays from the Washington Monument overlooking it.”
By the 1930s, electrical Christmas lights had become the American standard of holiday decorating. Christmas tree lighting at Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center began in 1931. The inventor of the distinctively bulbous Christmas lights, Chicagoland resident Carl Otis, conceived of bright, colorful bubble-shaped lights in the early 1940s and first offered them for sale through the NOMA company, according to Scott Holleran in The Daily North Shore. When Otis lost control of his patent in 1950, he opened a hobby shop called The Otis Company on Green Bay Road, which closed in 1957. String light sales plunged after the rise of the artificial, including an aluminum, Christmas tree, which changed decorating rituals. By 1966, the NOMA company filed for bankruptcy. By the 1970s, Christmas lights were mostly foreign-made.
Colored electrical Christmas lights remain popular, however, and, as Malanowski puts it in Smithsonian magazine, “it all started with [Edward] Johnson’s miracle on 36th Street.”
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Sources: history.com; ThoughtCo article by editor, journalist and historian Robert J. McNamara; author Jamie Malanowski writing in Smithsonian magazine; The Daily North Shore article by Scott Holleran; Time magazine article by Melissa Chan; Popular Mechanics article by Heidi Davis
