“Why are there Christmas lights?”
Livia’s been demanding an answer to this question. Demanding. It’s like the presence of Christmas lights on houses is offending her somehow, and it’s time for answers for such an offense! She’s asked the question several times now and I usually end up talking about darkness and light. Livia understands darkness, it’s a word she uses to describe the Kingdom of the Night exhibit at the Henry Doorly Zoo. (Unlike me, she’s fascinated with that exhibit.)
December is the darkest month of the year; the days will begin to lengthen again once we reach the Winter Solstice. In this month of darkness, we string lights outside our houses and on our Christmas trees, we light candles in windows and relax in the flickering warmth. We long for light. This longing finds eternal contentment in the Light of the world, the Savior whose coming we celebrate during this season. The desire for beautiful strings of lights during a dark season is a reflection of this greater longing for light in a dark world. The news has been full of darkness recently… I’m thankful for a Savior who brings light to the hearts of men, and who will one day fully redeem the darkness.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that had been made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
…He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:1-5, 10-13
2 Comments
jared Dec 12, 2007 10:35 AM
ooo! i like your answer.
following is the “history” of the Christmas lights from wikipedia:
The first known electrically illuminated Christmas tree was the creation of Edward H. Johnson, an associate of inventor Thomas Edison. While he was vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, a predecessor of today’s Con Edison electric utility, he had Christmas tree light bulbs especially made for him. He proudly displayed his Christmas tree, which was hand-wired with 80 red, white and blue electric incandescent light bulbs the size of walnuts, on December 22, 1882 at his home on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Local newspapers ignored the story, seeing it as a publicity stunt. However, it was published by a Detroit newspaper reporter, and Johnson has become widely regarded as the Father of Electric Christmas Tree Lights. By 1900, businesses started stringing up Christmas lights behind their windows.[1] Christmas lights were too expensive for the average person; as such, electric Christmas lights did not become the majority replacement for candles until 1930.[2]
In 1895, U.S. President Grover Cleveland proudly sponsored the first electrically lit Christmas tree in the White House. It was a huge specimen, featuring more than a hundred multicolored lights. 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.
From that point on, electrically illuminated Christmas trees, but only indoors, grew with mounting enthusiasm in the United States and elsewhere. San Diego in 1904 and New York City in 1912 were the first recorded instances of the use of Christmas lights outside.[3] McAdenville North Carolina claims to have been the first in 1956.[4] The Library of Congress credits the town for inventing “the tradition of decorating evergreen trees with Christmas lights dates back to 1956 when the McAdenville Men’s Club conceived of the idea of decorating a few trees around the McAdenville Community Center.”[5] However, the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree has had “lights” since 1931, but did not have real electric lights until 1956.[6] Furthermore, Philadelphia’s Christmas Light Show and Disney’s Christmas Tree also began in 1956.[7][8] Though General Electric sponsored community lighting competitions during the 1920s, it would take until the mid 1950s for the use of such lights to be adopted by average households.
Over a period of time, strings of Christmas lights found their way into use in places other than Christmas trees. Soon, strings of lights adorned mantles and doorways inside homes, and ran along the rafters, roof lines, and porch railings of homes and businesses. In recent times, many city skyscrapers are decorated with long mostly-vertical strings of a common theme, and are activated simultaneously in Grand Illumination ceremonies.
In the mid 2000s, the video of the home of Carson Williams was widely distributed on the internet as a viral video. It garnered national attention in 2005 from The Today Show on NBC, Inside Edition and the CBS Evening News and was featured in a Miller television commercial.[9][10] Williams turned his hobby into a commercial venture, and was commissioned to scale up his vision to a scale of 250,000 lights at a Denver shopping center, as well as displays in parks and zoos.
Mom L Dec 12, 2007 3:44 PM
Thank you for your lovely description of light and darkness. All of you kids have the gift of writing…thank you, Lord. xo Mom