65 Christmas Lights Facts To Know Before The Holiday Season
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The holiday season is filled with joy, merrymaking, and excitement for the wonderful festival of Christmas.
Christmas is a major religious festival in the Christian religion, but today, almost everyone, regardless of faith, celebrates this religious festival. Christmas is a festival where we see hot chocolate stirring in mugs, Santa Claus giving presents to children, and the night becoming more twinkling than ever because of all those Christmas lights on houses, trees, and roads.
An elaborate light display is what is required to take your Christmas tree to the next level. But, do you know what the significance of Christmas lights is? We will uncover the facts related to Christmas lights here.
If you enjoyed this article, why not also read about Christmas music facts and Christmas tree facts for kids here on Kidadl?
Fun Facts About Christmas Lights
Christmas lights are also called fairy lights, string lights, and festive lights.
From Christmas Day, the days start getting longer and the nights shorter. Before the 1880s, trees were decorated with candles instead of Christmas lights. In America alone, roughly 150 million sets of holiday lights are sold. Christmas trees were famous and originated from Germany, not America.
Christmas lights were invented by Edward.H.Johnson. Additionally, China is the biggest supplier of these twinkling lights, called Christmas lights, globally.
Christmas lights are not only displayed during Christmas but are used for several other festivals such as Halloween, Easter, and Independence Day.
Annually more than 20 million Christmas lights go for recycling. China is the biggest receiver for recycling Christmas lights and is called 'The World Capital of Recycling Christmas Lights'.
Christmas lights are not only used to decorate trees but also used to decorate trees and sculptures, which are called motifs.
Christmas lights have caused a lot of tragic fire hazards in the past when trees were decorated with candles.
A 15-year-old teenager, Albert Sadacca helped make the lights popular.
Today, you may find Christmas lights very cheap but, in the beginning, they were very expensive.
The world record for "most lights on a residential property" is held by a family in New York.
Christmas Lights Invention Facts
Edward Johnson, Thomas Eddison, and Albert Sadacca are credited with the invention of Christmas lights.
Thomas Eddison was the actual inventor of the light bulb and he also created the first Christmas lights in the form of an electric light strand, which we now call Christmas light or fairy lights.
On December 22, 1882, Edward Johnson and Thomas Eddison hung the first string of lights outside the Menlo Park Laboratory, which attracted the attention of railroad passengers.
His first bulb string consisted of hand-wired 80 red, blue, and white lights.
Sadly, it was seen as a mere publicity stunt, and every newspaper ignored this news, except one. The Detroit newspaper published this news, which resulted in naming Johnson as the founder of electric Christmas lights.
Although people were still very skeptical about the electricity twist in their customs, it took almost forty years for Christmas lights to hang on every house in the city.
Seeing the hazards caused by candle fire and the public still not accepting the illumination of electric Christmas lights powered by electricity, U.S. President Grover Cleveland initiated the acceptance of electric Christmas lights by illuminating hundreds of electric multi-colored bulb lights on the white-house family Christmas tree.
Slowly and gradually, people started accepting the use of Christmas lights instead of candles. In 1923, the 30th U.S. President, Calvin Coolidge, started the celebration of Christmas by lighting the national Christmas tree with 3000 electric bulb lights.
It is noteworthy that a random inspection by the European Commission in 2009 reported that 30% of lighting sets were so crudely created they could give out an electrical shock or cause a fire, leading to serious injuries!
Christmas Lights Significance
Today every child knows that Christmas means houses and figures decorated with the pretty sight of Christmas lights. But, little do we know about its significance. Those miniature lights surely mean a lot more than we think.
The custom of Christmas lights is borrowed from pagan yule rituals. These rituals celebrated the return of longer days or sun by lighting candles on trees after the solstice.
Fire and candles are always necessary during the winter festivals, they are also given religious symbolism, like the Star of Bethlehem.
The main reason behind lighting candles is that the light symbolizes Jesus Christ.
It cannot be ignored that most of the markets and shops are now decorated with lights on Christmas to attract customers and increase sales.
History Of Christmas Lights
Christmas has always been celebrated with joy and happiness. From the beginning, bonfires, feasts, and dancing celebrations were always a part of this festival. Christmas has a long and fascinating history to explore.
Lights on Christmas signify the light of Christ. People have always been decorating their houses and Christmas trees with light even before the invention of the electric bulb.
They used to decorate their houses and trees with candles. But sometimes these candle decorations have caused fire hazards in their houses which led people to carefully think before decorating their houses. This then led to the emergence of the electric bulb Christmas lights, invented by Thomas Edison and Edward Johnson.
They hung the first string of lights in 1882. And ever since then it started the custom of lighting electrical bulbs on Christmas trees.
Today we can see that many neighborhoods display lights to show their enthusiasm for the festival. In the Christmas season, there are contests for the biggest Christmas tree decoration and many more in which they decorate their Christmas trees with numerous beautiful flickering lights, bells, socks, stars, and sticks.
In the future, we can hope to see many more modifications in the celebrations.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 65 Christmas lights facts to know before the holiday season then why not take a look at Christmas card facts or Christmas tree history facts.
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