Thomas Edison, the founder of General Electric and the incandescent bulb, rigged several strings of electric lights, each wrapped in a different color of crepe, and hung them outside his laboratory to celebrate the Christmas season of 1880.  This happening is believed to be the first use of electrical Christmas lights.

Two years later, the vice president of Edison’s company, Edward H. Johnson, used the string of colored lights on the Christmas tree that decorated the parlor of his home – the first in the city to have electricity.  The company wanted to make certain that this historic occasion was documented by the press; however, most news outlets thought it was another of Edison’s publicity stunts and did not attend.  One newspaper, the Detroit Post and Tribune, did send a reporter who chronicled ,what was to become, the first news story of the world’s first Christmas tree lighting. He  wrote:

There at the rear of the beautiful parlor, was a large Christmas tree presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect.  It was brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box.  There were eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue.  As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution.  The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white, blue, white, red, blue – all evening.

It would be several years before the electric Christmas lights would catch on with the general public.  There were tow reasons for this: first, unless you lived in a major city, electricity was not yet available to most homes; and second, the cost was quite prohibitive.  This was due in part to the fact that these colored lights had to be installed on a wire by an electrician.

The electric Christmas lights began to grow in popularity at elite social events after 1895. It was that year when President Grover Cleveland sponsored the first Christmas tree with colored electric lights in the White House.   Christmas tree parties, hosted by the who’s who of the social register, became the ‘A’ list event of the holiday season.  The cost for these parties were exorbitant. The price of a Christmas tree, complete with electric lights, could run more than $300 – the equivalent to $2000, today.

Edison decided that advertising was necessary for his Christmas lights to gain visibility.  The November 28, 1900 edition of Scientific American Magazine carried the earliest known General Electric advertisement for lamps to be used on Christmas trees.  The ad offered the lights for sale or rent.

In 1903, GE introduced the first set of pre-wired sockets, known as festoons, to the public.  The cost of a set of 24 lights was $12.; expensive, considering the average weekly paycheck was approximately $13.

The market for Christmas lights was about to be blown wide open as a result of a ruling by the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.  They refused to papent the socket sets because it was not considered a new invention.  The office sited that “the wiring of the socket is based on common electrical knowledge.”

Shortly after this decision came down, several companies went into the electric Christmas light business.  Immediately the price began to fall, making colorful Christmas light sets affordable for most people.