It was December 31, 1879, when Thomas Edison (1847-1931) demonstrated the incandescent light bulb in his workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey. A month later, on 27 January 1880, he received a patent for it, although he did not have paternity of the invention, as other researchers had laid the groundwork for its realisation. However, it was he who first put it into practice and subsequently into commercial application. 

At Christmas 1880, the American inventor decided to decorate the exterior of his Menlo Park laboratory with 290 lamps to create a festive atmosphere for the dinner he was to give to New York dignitaries.

Although decorating the building with lamps was not associated with the Christmas celebration, it was a close associate of Edison's, named Edward Hibbert Johnson (1846-1917), who two years later, to show off the new invention, came up with the idea of using small electric lamps to decorate the Christmas tree.

Up to that time, Christmas trees had been lit with small candles, which in many cases caused fires. Johnson designed 80 red, white and blue pear-shaped bulbs and connected them with a single wire. On December 22, 1882, the construction completed and Johnson invited reporters to his Manhattan home to cover the first electric Christmas tree lighting in history.  

His publicity invention paid off, as in the following days, the newspapers carried the news, with the Electrical World magazine of the time calling the Christmas tree "the most beautiful in the United States."

Johnson continued to decorate his tree with electric lights in the years to come. On December 27, 1884, the New York Times published an extensive report from Johnson's home on the east side of Manhattan:

"A beautiful as well as original Christmas tree was shown to a few friends by Mr. E. H. Johnson, president of the Edison Company for Electric Lighting, last night at his residence, No. 136 East Thirty-sixth Street. The tree was lighted by electricity and no child ever saw a brighter and more brightly colored tree than Mr. Johnson's children. Mr. Johnson has been experimenting with lighting houses with electricity for some time and decided that his children should have an original Christmas tree."

The article went on to comment on the rotating movement of the tree thanks to the "ingenious use of a small Edison dynamo at its base, which, passing current from the large dynamo to the cellar of the house, converted it into a motor. Through this motor, the tree rotated in a steady, regular motion.”

However, Johnson's idea did not have widespread commercial appeal, as many Americans did not fully trust electricity, and the lamps were too expensive to be practical. As Christmas antique collector John Hanssen tells Time magazine, "at that time a set of eight bulbs cost the buyer about a week's wages, or, at today's prices, about $80."

It took four decades for the pre-assembled lights of General Electric, which had begun producing Christmas bulbs, to become cheaper and thus more affordable to the public. In addition, public tree lighting began in the early 1920s. In 1923, the National Christmas Tree in Washington, D.C. was lit, and another famous lighting, that of the tree at Rockfeller Center in New York City, was first held in 1931.

Today, lights are considered an integral part of Christmas and no one, young or old, could imagine the holidays without their glow!