Christmas Lights

Imagine a world without Christmas lights.

That would be the world before 1882.  Oh, people built bonfires and attached candles to the limbs of their Christmas trees (sometimes burning down the town in the process), but it wasn’t until Edward Johnson, Thomas Edison’s associate, invented electric Christmas tree lights that American homes began to really sparkle and twinkle.

As the Johnson’s family decorated for the holidays that year, he poured his energy into producing a string of eighty small, brightly colored lights.  As they sparkled through the front window, crowds of people lined up to gasp in wonder.  It seemed magical, especially after Johnson developed a system for making them flash on and off.  Wanting to see the lights more closely, people knocked on the front door.  Newspapers sent reports all over the country, and reporters marched, one after another, into and out of the Johnson home.

Electric Christmas tree lights didn’t immediately become a commercial item, however, because no one except Thomas Edison, Edward Johnson, and a few others had electricity in their home.  Furthermore, it was rather expensive.  Johnson’s string of bulbs cost over $100 in materials—more money than some Americans made in a year.

Gradually, however, as more people got electricity, Christmas lights became more popular.  In 1910, General Electric introduced a string of bulbs that could be produced and sold inexpensively, and Christmas lights have been household item ever since… 

David Jeremiah, Signs of Life, P.  11