Lighting up the season

Posted 8/21/12

REGION — The Upper Delaware River Valley is filled with lights this time of year, like this display on Boyd’s Mills Road in Milanville, PA, but the tradition of using light to celebrate Christmas …

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Lighting up the season

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REGION — The Upper Delaware River Valley is filled with lights this time of year, like this display on Boyd’s Mills Road in Milanville, PA, but the tradition of using light to celebrate Christmas dates back a few centuries. In Germany in the 18th century, candles were placed on Christmas trees inside of houses and lit, where they would be admired by the family, but usually only for a brief time.

The first known use of electric lights to brighten up a Christmas tree is attributed to Edward H. Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, the man credited with perfecting the incandescent light bulb. Johnson decorated his Christmas tree with 80 hand-wired bulbs at his New York City home in 1882.

Buying electric lights for the tree did not catch on with the general public until the cost of the lightbulbs was reduced dramatically by the 1920s. By the middle of the 20th century, the custom of stringing lights on buildings caught on, especially in the new tract-housing developments built after World War II. Eventually the consumer habit of lighting up the night spread to structures other than buildings and spread across the lawn.

According to the National Retail Federation, U.S. consumers will have spent more than $5 billion on Christmas lights and decorations by the end of the holiday season.

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