How did the Christmas Tree Trimming Tradition Come to be?

December 19, 1843…..

That's the day Charles Dicken's short story "A Christmas Carol" was published.

According to historian Ronald Hutton: Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centered observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The holiday, remade as a family-centered rather than community-centered festival, carried its own set of contradictions: the practice of gift-giving created the possibility of commercialization, and the shift from community to familial focus further eroded the traditions of communal religious observance.

June 26, 1870……

That's the day that President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas (December 25) to be a federal holiday.

December 22, 1882……

That's the day that a man named Edward H. Johnson completed the wiring of his Christmas tree with 80 red, white and blue electric incandescent light bulbs - each the size of a  walnut.

Johnson was the vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company (the predecessor of today's Con Edison electric utility) who lived on Fifth Avenue in New York City, which was one of the first areas of the city wired for electricity.

The event didn't gain much publicity, however, until he did it again in 1884. And the practice didn't really spread, because it took a while for electricity to spread across the United States.

In 1895, U.S. President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first electrically lit Christmas tree in the White House. Also in this year, the first commercially produced Christmas tree lamps were manufactured in strings of multiples of eight sockets by the General Electric Co. of Harrison, New Jersey. Each socket took a miniature two-candela carbon-filament lamp.

By 1900, many business owners had started stringing up Christmas lights behind their windows in an attempt to attract customers, and the trend gathered speed as the years went on and more and more cities and small towns acquired electricity.

Then came the Great Depression, and in 1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed moving the Thanksgiving holiday date back a week, in order to extend the Christmas shopping season and boost the economy (since buyers typically did not begin their shopping until after Thanksgiving.). However, statistics showed that the extra week made no difference, and in 1941 Thanksgiving was moved back to the fourth Thursday in November.

The celebration of Christmas as a commercial event really took off in the 1930s, as retailers did their best to help boost the economy - and save their own stores - by encouraging people to shop for toys for their children.

Christmas lights

All that history now brings me to the point of this essay - a history of the Christmas collectibles that sprung up from the 1930s to date, in particular Christmas lights.

A  typical lighted tree of the early 1900s cost more than $300, far beyond what the typical homeowner of the day could afford - the cost included the generator and the services of someone to do the wiring.

Battery-operated lighting strings were soon made available, manufactured by the Edison Decorative and Miniature Lamp Department.

The first sets of pre-wired sockets (called festoons), were introduced by GE in 1903.  General Electric's first offering of Christmas lights cost $12.00 for a set of  24 lights, which were enough to light a medium sized table-top tree. The average wage for the time was a 22¢ per hour, ($13.20 per week in 1903, when an average work week was six 10 hour days).

GE attempted to patent their festoon idea, but were denied. They quickly faced a handful of competitors: The Electric Porcelain Manufacturing Company, the Jaeger Miniature Lamp Manufacturing Company and the Heinrich Electrical Novelty Company.

As the American Christmas light industry grew, so did the products offered. The shape of the bulbs varied (from simple bulbs to bird or fruit shapes!), as well as the size, the amount of bulbs and their arrangement, and the wiring scheme. Their packaging was wide and varied as well.

In 1920, carbon filament lamp sets were replaced by tungsten lightbulbs. Flourescent light bulbs appeared in the late 1940s. During World War II, packaging and sets became more toned down...after the end of the war Japanese imports became the norm... the history of America can be discovered in the chronological history of the packaging and design of Christmas lights!

There are decades of collectible Christmas lights available from estate sales, antique shops, and of course from The Velveteen Rabbit Antiques.