I AM ONLY vaugely aware of the enduring debate of multicoloured vs white holiday lights. I say vaugely, because at our place, it’s always elegant white lights, with no debate. Sure, colourful lights are fun, but chic is always what I prefer. Except this year, I came across the images below of a very colourful well, everything, and I actually really liked it. That doesn’t mean that we’re switching to coloured lights this year, but I am much more open to the idea than I was before…
As you know, I love to learn the history of things, and then share them with you, so if you’re ever wondering who invented Christmas lights, well, it was Thomas Edison, the inventor of the first successful practical light bulb. Edison created the very first strand of electric lights which he displayed outside of his Menlo Park Laboratory during the Christmas season of 1880. It would, of course, take almost forty years for electric Christmas lights to become the tradition it is today. Before electric Christmas lights, people would use candles to light up their Christmas trees, a practice that was unsurprisingly, dangerous, leading to many home fires. In 1882, Edward H. Johnson put the very first string of electric Christmas tree lights together. 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.
Until 1903, when General Electric began to offer pre-assembled kits of Christmas lights, stringed lights were reserved for the wealthy and those who possessed electrical skills/knowledge, as the wiring of electric lights was very expensive and required the hiring of the services of a wireman, (now known as an electrician). According to some estimates, to light an average Christmas tree with electric lights before 1903 would have cost $2000.00 today. Though Thomas Edison and Edward H. Johnson pioneered the first electric Christmas light strands in 1880 and 1882, it was teenager Albert Sadacca, whose family owned a novelty lighting company, who illuminated their widespread commercial potential in 1917. Spotting untapped demand, young Albert suggested the store begin selling brightly coloured string light sets for Christmas to the public. By the 1920s, Albert and his brothers had formed the National Outfit Manufacturers Association (NOMA), a trade association that would become the NOMA Electric Company. NOMA would dominate the Christmas lighting market for decades, until the 1960s. And no doubt the debate of multicoloured vs. white holiday lights has been raging since then…
