The History of Christmas Lights

Legend credits Martin Luther as the first to decorate a Christmas tree with lights. After a walk through a forest on a starry night in Germany during the 16th century, Luther decorated an evergreen with candles to illustrate the experience to his family.

Inventor Edward H. Johnson caused a sensation 300 years later in New York City when he strung the first set of electric lights on a Christmas tree in 1882, three years after his boss Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb.

Despite the availability of electricity in the early 1900s, Americans continued to decorate Christmas trees with candles. Electric tree lights were crudely hand-wired and bare connections often caused fires. Pails of water were kept standing by the trees to douse any blazes.

Ever-Ready Co. of New York began mass-producing strings of lights in 1903. The lights were expensive, hot and prone to outages -- if one bulb burnt out the whole strand went dark.

In 1927, General Electric solved many of the problems of the early Christmas lights -- manufacturing an inexpensive strand of tiny bulbs that didn’t overheat and stayed lit if one went out.

Sources: National Archives and Records Administration, “Christmas Almanac” by Michael Stephenson