The custom of bringing evergreen cuttings inside at year’s end can be traced back to pagan times throughout Europe and Scandinavia. As far back as the first century A.D., accounts of using green boughs and cuttings to mark the season gradually evolved into their association with more Christian beliefs and practices.
The cone-shaped tree, symbolic of the holy trinity, was introduced by Lutheran reformer Martin Bauer in 1539 ,when he placed a Christmas tree inside Strasbourg Cathedral, an act in opposition to the Catholic practice of displaying cribs and mangers during the holy season.
Not long after Bauer introduced the tree to the cathedral celebration, Moravians added candles to trees, the light from which symbolized Jesus as “the light to the world.” The custom soon spread to homes of wealthy German families, some of whom eventually brought it with them when they migrated to North America.
Candles, an expensive light source in the 18th century, could be secured to tree branches using pins or melted wax; a more refined, and secure, holder specifically made for this purpose was widely available by century’s end.
Over time, the custom of celebrating Christmas with a decorated tree, using fruits, glass orbs and candles, evolved further, expanding from homes of aristocrats like the United Kingdom’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, to homes throughout Europe, and then by mid-19th century, to the United States, thanks in large part to illustrations of the royal family’s tree in Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular magazine of the time.
As the 19th century came to a close, electricity made it possible to replace candles with lights. Our communities began to use electric lights on holiday displays soon after Edward H. Johnson, inventor and vice president of Edison Electric Light Company, introduced in 1882 his bespoke, “hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue electric incandescent light bulbs the size of walnuts at his home near Fifth Avenue in New York City… [becoming] widely regarded as the Father of the Electric Christmas Tree Lights.”
Less than 10 years later, President Grover Cleveland’s White House had its first electrically lit tree. Merchants soon saw the benefit of lights to enchant shoppers and enhance holiday window displays. Civic organizers took up the trend, including lit trees in community spaces in the years leading up to WWI.
It did not take long for homeowners, who saw holiday lights adorning city and county buildings as well as shops, to incorporate them into their own homes, if they could afford them, where lights were placed on exterior as well as interior surfaces.
The famous Rockefeller Center tree—begun as a show of workers’ appreciation for employment during the Great Depression—did not have its earliest light source replaced by electric bulbs until the late 1950s. This coincided with the growth of suburban communities where free-standing homes, the popularity of television, and the rise of a middle class thanks to the G.I Bill, made improved holiday lights available to average families who created more elaborate displays.
Early incandescent light bulbs, and fluorescent lamp sets available to a select few in the 1930s-1940s, gradually improved throughout the 1950s and ‘60s; the oil embargo and climate concerns of the 1970s increased consumer focus on energy efficiency and contributed to the LED light sources most of us rely on today.
Featuring a range of colors, arrangements and sizes from tiny so-called “fairy lights” to cascading strands, repeating motion and more, we’ve seen light displays extended into additional seasonal events like July 4th, Hallowe’en, seasonal patio décor and luminaria, a popular Southwestern custom where candles are placed inside sand-weighted bags to create paper lanterns to light walkways at Christmas—all continuing the tradition begun so long ago: lighting the way, in celebration and renewal, with a glow that brightens the darkest time of the year.
(Source: “Christmas lights.” En.wikipedia.org)
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