By Abraham Freeman-Moore
December 1, 2024
The first holiday decorations to be pardoned from the storage unit each year are the Christmas lights. As I retrieve the tangled masses of lights from the semi-clear plastic box I have the slightest feeling of trepidation.
Will they turn on? I wonder.
I learned the hard way as a kid that you always plug the lights in before untangling them. It takes me only a few seconds to find the end with the prongs.
Here’s the moment of truth. I think.
They turned on, thank goodness.
If they had not, I usually toss them to the side to be untangled later. Checking the fuses in the nonprong plug side is the easiest and quickest fix, if that's not it, it's onto the next step. It takes some time, but I look at each light with a flashlight to see if the hair-like filament has burned through. If so, I grab the donor light set. This is usually a string of lights that stopped working years ago for an unknown reason. Each bulb has a latch to hold it into place. With its release, the light is liberated to come to a new home where it may twinkle once again.
Whoever decided or engineered strings of lights to stop working due to one light going out has a sick sense of humor. In my opinion, the age-old saying that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link doesn't hold water to strings of Christmas lights. If a link in a chain breaks at least you have the rest of the chain.
Christmas lights not surprisingly have their origins tied to Christmas trees. With Christmas trees being decorated with hundreds of lights each year it’s difficult to imagine them otherwise. Before electricity and light bulbs, candles were used. The idea of multiple candles sitting on stiff boughs of a pine tree looks magical in my mind. Though the thought of it also makes my palms sweat. In previous years when I had a real tree I struggled with keeping it watered so that it didn’t drop all its needles before the big day. The closer to Christmas the tree and I got, the drier it looked.
Candles to light Christmas trees were reportedly first used in the “mid of the 17th century (Christmas Tree Facts). These were not necessarily the refined candles that we use today. Prior candles were costly, thus people attempted to find cheaper options like filling the shell of a nut with oil which turned it into a type of oil lamp. With the increasing fires from the pairing of fire and Christmas trees, a ban was eventually placed. This was specifically in Germany (Brunner). So what is the solution? You may think. You probably have the answer already due to the benefit of living in the present, it’s light bulbs.
Thomas Edison gave us a safe stable light in the darkness in 1880 when he created the light bulb. The first use of Christmas lights on a Christmas tree was in 1882. You could be forgiven for thinking that Edison is responsible for our Christmas lights of today. Edison was more of an inventor than a businessman. A man by the name of Edward Johnson helped to promote the light bulb by creating Christmas lights in the colors of “red, white, and blue”(Who Invented). Mr. Johnson was the first to decorate his tree with Christmas lights. He thought it so spectacular that he placed it next to a window for all to see. Like anything new, the well-off are the first to own or try it. This was the same with Christmas lights. In 1990 sixteen lights were priced at $12 (Malanowski). This would be $486.34 today (US Inflation). Though like everything the price eventually came down as the technology progressed (Malanowski).
My wife and I own two different types of lights, incandescent and LEDs. We both think the latter provides a more Christmassy feel, though that's probably due to growing up with them. While I was growing up in the early 2000’s I remember my dad talking about how LED lights were the next big thing. We would look at the LED Christmas lights at Lowes and Kmart, marveling at how bright they were even though they were smaller and used less energy. Back then LED Christmas lights were still too new, thus being too expensive for my family to justify purchasing them for their energy efficiency and the novelty of them.
It’s estimated that if all of the Christmas lights in the United States of America were LED that had ENERGY STAR’s certification then the USA would save “$850 million each year” or the same amount as decreasing the “emission from 940,000 vehicles.” ENERGY STAR was created for the very purpose of reducing waste, it was formed in 1992 by the “US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)” (Decorative). I found this information interesting, due to seeing their logo on electronics at the stores.
For many of the Christmas Eves growing up, we would attend evening mass. Afterward, we would promptly pile into the family car to drive through what we called Christmas Lane. I don’t know the name of the street, or neighborhood. It was always known as Christmas Lane between my siblings and me throughout the year. I would guess ninety percent of the houses put up Christmas lights. Christmas Lane was simple compared to the Christmas light shows on social media today. There were no lasers or light displays. Every light was a physical bulb and every character in the yard be it Santa, the Grinch, or reindeer were either inflatable decorations, wood cutouts, or molded plastic. One year a house even had actors in the yard as Santa and a real live nativity scene.
Living in an apartment space is limited, as many know. The positive is Christmas decorations in the form of lights don’t take up a lot of room. Thus keeping decorations for Christmas around for the year is that much easier. This year we started decorating two days after Thanksgiving. When I wake up in the morning I like to turn on the Christmas lights and drink my tea or decaf coffee while I reflect on the day to come.
References
Brunner, Bernd. “Inventing the Christmas Tree.” Yale University Press, Yale University, 22 Dec. 2015, yalebooks.yale.edu/2015/12/22/inventing-the-christmas-tree/.
“Christmas Tree Facts.” Illinois Extension, extension.illinois.edu/christmas-trees/christmas-tree-facts. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
“Decorative Light Strings.” ENERGY STAR, www.energystar.gov/products/decorative_light_strings. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
Malanowski, Jamie. “Untangling the History of Christmas Lights.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Dec. 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/untangling-history-christmas-lights-180961140/.
“US Inflation Calculator.” U.S. Inflation Calculator 2022 - Find Historical Values from 1871: Casaplorer, Wowa Leads Inc., casaplorer.com/inflation-calculator. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
“Who Invented Electric Christmas Lights?” The Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/everyday-mysteries/technology/item/who-invented-electric-christmas-lights/. Accessed 29 Nov. 2024.
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