December 22 - First String of Christmas Tree Lights!

Posted on December 22, 2021

Key Points

This is an update of my post published on December 22, 2010:

Before this day in 1882, Christmas trees were decorated with wax candles—and I can hardly believe that, because fire plus dead pine or fir trees seem like such a dangerous combination! I suppose people didn’t have their decorated trees as long as many of us have them now—about a month in a centrally-heated home, in my case!

At any rate, Thomas Edison’s associate, Edward H. Johnson, created a string of Christmas tree lights with miniature two-candlepower carbon-filament lamps.

Nowadays we have easily accessible strings of “white” (clear) and colored lights, several sizes of bulbs, “icicle” shaped strings of ordinary lights plus the new LED icicles that look like falling rain or snow, rope lights, twinkle lights, and many other products.

Above, rope lights,
below, LED “dripping icycle” lights

Do you prefer all white lights on a tree (above)
or colorful lights on a tree (below)?

Nowadays zoos and malls and lots of other places have light displays, and even ordinary people can program light shows to music—there is an entire street near me that has WOW lights programmed to the same music!

The beautiful light display above is in Kobe, Japan.
The display below is designed for drive-through enjoyment!

Here are a few Christmas light faves:

This is my personal favorite: “Wizards in Winter” by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

A Christmas favorite is “Carol of the Bells.” Here are a CRAZY number of lights dedicated to lighting up that song.

And here is a Star Wars-inspired light show. With lyrics like “You don’t know the power of the dark side,” and set to Darth Vader’s Imperial March, this doesn’t seem all that Christmas-y to me, but it does look really cool!

The lights above make the house look like
decorated gingerbread, almost!

Do you prefer super colorful and cluttered,
like the display above? Or minimal and classy,
like the blue tree scene below?