Christmas Countdown Digital Advent Calendar: 19 - The history of using Christmas lights

December 6, 8:42 AMEarly Childhood Parenting ExaminerAngele Sionna

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Early Childhood Parenting Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Every day until Christmas, I'm going to be counting down with a digital advent calendar. That just means each day I'll feature something Christmas-y for the kids like music or a good deed for the day to share the spirit of Christmas or a craft project or the likes.

December 6.... 19 more days to go. Put up the Christmas lights on the house and teach your children the history of Christmas lights.

Before electric Christmas lights were invented, people used to use candles to light up their homes for Christmas. Read about that tradition HERE.

Electric light strands themselves have quite a history, here's a brief version from the Library of Congress website:

Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first successful practical light bulb, created the very first strand of electric lights. During the Christmas season of 1880, these strands were strung around the outside of his Menlo Park Laboratory.

• Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together in 1882. Johnson, Edison’s friend and partner in the Edison’s Illumination Company, hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and wound them around his Christmas tree. Not only was the tree illuminated with electricity, it also revolved.
• Some credit President Grover Cleveland with spurring the acceptance of indoor electric Christmas lights. In 1895, President Cleveland requested that the White House family Christmas tree be illuminated by hundreds of multi-colored electric light bulbs.
• On Christmas Eve 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the country’s celebration of Christmas by lighting the National Christmas Tree with 3,000 electric lights on the Ellipse located south of the While House.
• Until 1903, when General Electric began to offer pre-assembled kits of Christmas lights, stringed lights were reserved for the wealthy and electrically savvy... According to some, to light an average Christmas tree with electric lights before 1903 would have cost $2000.00 in today’s dollars.
• While Thomas Edison and Edward H. Johnson may have been the first to create electric strands of light in 1880/1882, it was Albert Sadacca who saw a future in selling electric Christmas lights in the 1920s.

You can read more about it from the Library of Congress website.