Electric Christmas Lights Dazzle America

NEW YORK — The dark winter evenings of December are witnessing a brilliant transformation across American cities as the marvel of electricity reshapes an ancient holiday custom. For generations, families have illuminated their evergreen boughs with wax candles, enduring the persistent peril of house fires and dripping tallow for the sake of festive cheer. Today, however, tiny glass bulbs glowing with steady incandescent light offer a breathtaking glimpse into modern domestic life.

This luminous tradition began in December 1882 at the East 36th Street townhouse of Edward H. Johnson, an associate of the renowned inventor Thomas Edison. Mr. Johnson hand-wired eighty small glass bulbs, tinted in patriotic shades of red, white, and blue, around the branches of a parlor tree. To the astonishment of visitors who gathered outside his street-level window, the entire evergreen slowly rotated on an electric spindle while the colored globes pulsed with quiet radiance. Reporters who witnessed the parlor exhibition documented the wonder of a tree aglow with electric power, marking the first time the new current had been harnessed for seasonal decoration.

Despite this celebrated beginning, electric holiday trees remain an exclusive luxury for the nation's wealthiest citizens. The expense of adopting the technology is formidable. Because standard municipal power grids do not reach every parlor, illuminating a single tree currently requires hiring skilled wiremen to hand-assemble individual sockets, test delicate filaments, and connect cumbersome wet-cell generators. In many instances, the total cost to illuminate a parlor tree approaches several hundred dollars—a sum equivalent to multiple months of wages for an ordinary working family.

Nevertheless, public curiosity continues to surge. Prominent department stores along New York's Ladies' Mile have begun installing illuminated evergreens in their grand display windows, drawing dense crowds of onlookers bundled against the winter chill. Commercial firms are also experimenting with pre-assembled strings of bulbs, seeking to lower manufacturing expenses and eliminate the necessity of hiring private electricians. As manufacturing techniques improve and central power stations multiply, electrical engineers predict that the warm gleam of incandescent holiday lights will eventually replace open flames in every home across the nation.