Christmas Tree Lights, Why Do We Have Them?

Early Christians in the 17th Century used to light up their Christmas trees by placing

a little candle on the end of the tree branch which was held in place with pins or with melted wax, and that continued like that till around the 1890s when candle holders started to be used. During the early 1900s little lanterns and glass balls were placed on the trees to hold the candles.

Lighting up a Christmas tree, which had been traditional in Germany, became popular in the United Kingdom during Queen Victorias reign and then as people emigrated the tradition spread to other countries.

In 1882 a British physicist was asked to add lights to the costumes of the cast for the opening night of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera at the Savoy Theatre in London. A

miniature version of the lights that were recently fitted in the theatre were made, and operated by batteries that where hidden behind their long hair and these intermittent flashing star lights were worn on the heads of the principle fairies. These lights where soon to became known as Fairy Lights.

Also that year in New York City the first Christmas tree lit with electrically powered lights was created. An associate of an electric light company had 80 bulbs made so he could decorate his Christmas tree that he displayed at his home. The bulbs were hand wired incandescent light bulbs and the colours he used where red, white and blue. The story was published by a newspaper reporter and by the 1900s businesses started putting up Christmas lights in their shop windows, but as the lights were very dear to buy families couldnt afford them so they still used the candles until the 1930s when the lights became widely used.

In America in 1895 the White House had its first electrically lit Christmas tree inside which had hundreds of multicoloured lights. It wasnt until 1904 that the first electrically lit Christmas lights was used outside and not until 1956 that the tradition of decorating trees outside with Christmas lights started when a North Carolina town decided to decorate trees around its community centre.

Over the years, as lights got better and cheaper for families to buy, more uses have been found for string lights other than on the Christmas tree. They can be hung around windows and doorways in our homes and they can even be draped around bushes and shrubs in our gardens. Businesses also use them to decorate their stores inside and out to hopefully encourage customers in to buy their products.

Christmas tree lights or as we also call them, fairy lights, have come along way since 1882. Some Christmas tree lights are still using incandescent light bulbs but as technology has developed we can now get lights where the bulbs are LED (light emitting diodes) and they are more energy efficient and longer lasting.

More recently solar string lights have become available that can now be used as outside Christmas tree lights for the front or back garden. Decorating the outside of our homes has become more popular and using solar powered Christmas lights is a cost effective and safe option. The string lights have energy saving LED bulbs which are automatically illuminated in the dark and having no running costs and no need to be connected to mains electricity as the solar panel is re-charged on a daily basis from the natural sun light, they are easy to install and cost effective.

by: A J Hall

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