Christmas Lights

Light Wrapping Template
Illustration: Eric Diesel

Everyone who decorates for the holidays knows the sight of a jumble of lights. No matter how thoughtfully we packed and stored them last January, it seems as if come late November/early December, the lights tangled themselves together like grapevines. They also have the power to accumulate, as evidenced by the fact, demonstrable to any jury, that however many strings we catalogued at storage time, they have profligated.

This year, as my holiday present to readers who decorate for the holidays, I am going to share foolproof ways to choose, hang and store holiday lights. But before we get to that, let’s learn about the history of holiday lights.

The tradition of holiday lights comes not just from Christmas but from Hannukah, Kwanzaa and Yule. Of these holidays, the oldest is Yule. In the ancient Western world, Yule was the celebration of the winter solstice, the day of the year when there is the least amount of daylight and the greatest amount of moonlight. These ancients perceived the year as a wheel, ever-spinning, with eight great spokes. The spokes corresponded to holidays, known as Sabbats, each of which occurred at approximately six-week intervals. In the ancient world Yule did not correspond with the new year – that was Samhain – it corresponded with the winter solstice.

The rites of the solstice were reverent indeed. Congregants gathered in the still of icy midnights, to mark the passage of time both grandly and in quiet reverence for this longest night of the year. From this moment, daylight would lengthen and warmth would strengthen. Sources of light, from the stars to the hearth fire, were celebrated on this long, dark, cold night. This looked forward to the next holiday – Candlemas – but on this night, the holiest of holy acts was to recognize the long cold night, and revere the illumination of waxing light.

In the forest, a mighty tree was chosen from among the evergreens, for it was those trees that stayed green during the Yule season that represented the everlasting hope of continuance. Offerings were made at the foot of this tree: a few handfuls of grain, a pour of wine or honey, even some feed for the creatures that sheltered there. Often candles – themselves precious -- illuminated a circle in the snow at the base of the tree. It is easy to see the correspondences between this festival of lights and those of Kwanzaa, Hannukah and Christmas. Each illustrates that winter holiday lights occupy – one could say illuminate - a special place where celebration can be cultural or secular but proceeds from religion.

And that brings us to the Christmas tree, which started as the Yule tree of those ancient rites, arrived as a household fixture in the 1800’s, and has become ubiquitous today. It is because of the Christmas tree that Christmas lights as we string them today evolved. The first household Christmas trees appeared in the early 1800’s in Europe, as a variation on the Yule tree rituals that was meant to individualize the celebrations to households as well as remove the symbol from its pagan roots and attach it to Christianized traditions. Those trees were decorated with lit candles (carefully tended, one hopes) and, eventually, glass decorations. As Christmas evolved, decorating for it expanded from the tree to the entire household, with decorations including those any of us would recognize today: sprigs of evergreens, holly, and mistletoe; lengths of ribbon; glass fancies; toys; and lights. What these Christmas decorations had in common was that they all referred to winter and to winter celebrations.

The first electrically illuminated Christmas tree is credited to Edward H. Johnson, who displayed a tree wired with electric bulbs in his New York City home in 1882. Mr. Johnson was wealthy, and though by the early 1900s electric Christmas lights were common in wealthy homes and in business, it was not until the Depression era that electric Christmas lights became available on the mass market. Due to the finances of the times, electric lights remained overall a mark of privilege, and in private homes electric Christmas lights, though not unheard of during the war years, didn’t really catch on as a household norm until the 1950s.

The same cannot be said of public spaces. From the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to the lights at Harrod’s, retailers have been using lights to decorate for the holidays for almost as long as lights were available to do so. This is now so commonplace that anyone who’s been to the mall in recent memory not only expects to see winter holiday lights there but steels themselves against the likelihood of seeing them as early as Halloween.

In downtown America, holiday decorating in municipalities took a creative turn when business owners would decorate not just their stores but business districts themselves. Just as each area of the American landscape once had its own distinct character, so was that reflected in holiday decorations. Silver bells hung from street signs or light poles, while the boulevards themselves were canopied by holiday swags that ran from one side of the street to the other. Downtown business districts often hosted holiday evenings of shopping and fellowship, of every kind from open houses with hot cider and ribbon candy to chorales to, of course, candlelight walks.

Not just business districts but neighborhoods where people lived took significant civil and individual pride in stringing lights for the holidays. Numerous of these became famous in their own right, from Candy Cane Lane in Los Angeles to Winter Street in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Though eventually they became homestead theme parks of animatronics and television specials, these expressions of holiday spirit began with the humble colored miniature light bulb.

That light bulb has changed a lot over the decades. Tree lights began as candles and progressed to miniature incandescent bulbs that had to be special ordered and often as not were rented. Christmas nostalgists remember a tangle of thick black cording, affixed with wide-mouth sockets into which one screwed a bullet-shaped bulb whose interior had been painted red, blue, green or yellow, with white and pink joining the line-up in later years. These bulbs were known were somewhat costly, which probably contributed to the desire to urge them outside where everyone could see that you had them. One might plug an auxiliary into a figural plastic display item that was rendered in every kind of holiday image from Rudolph to Santa, angels to Magi, trees to, tellingly, candles.

Once the practice of Christmas tree lights became common, variations began appearing. Many people have memories of trees, windowsills and mantels decorated with lights nestled in sprays of evergreen and sprigs of holly; of lights shaped like toys and candles; of lights shaped like snowflakes and snowmen and ice skates. There were bubble lights and fairy lights and movie star lights that referenced Shirley Temple and Roy Rogers and Robbie the Robot. There were lights shaped like nets of ornaments and lights that clipped to individual branches. And, lest any other culture or holiday feel left out, there were lights for Hannukah, Halloween, Easter, Valentine’s Day, the Fourth of July, birthdays and anniversaries.

Both lighting technology and practices evolved. Downtown America decorated less for the holidays, or moved from figural and highly referential Christmas displays to the clear lights that started appearing because they were ecumenical and that have evolved into the ubiquitous holiday adornment. The bulbs themselves have progressed from those nostalgic multi-colored bulbs to the clear strings of infinite tree-trunk wraparounds and back to nostalgia again. One of the most noticeable trends in holiday décor this year is retro lighting, from reissues of those clunky multicolored bulbs of the mid-century to a resurgence of figural lights. When manufactured by a responsible manufacturer, those modern lights are both safe and fail safe. Here is Urban Home Blog’s Guide to Holiday Lights. Use this guide each year to make sure your lights are safe and to enjoy both decorating with lights for the holidays and those brightly-lit holidays themselves.

Christmas Lights 
Test existing lights. Modern holiday lighting is so reasonably priced that there is no reason for anyone who wants to light their home for the holidays to use outdated or otherwise potentially unsafe lighting. So the first rule of holiday lights is: discard any light or string of lights that is potentially or actually unsafe. As an exception, if heirloom lights can be safely stored (i.e., do not have a dangerous short in the string or socket, as confirmed by an electrician), then safely store them. Handle them carefully when sharing the stories about these heirlooms, and promptly place them, unplugged, safely out of reach.

To test holiday lights, plug a long extension cord into a safely grounded socket in a safely grounded area of the home. Test each and every string of lights by plugging it into the socket. If it doesn’t light, if it sparks, or if it evidences any other kind of safety compromise, unplug it immediately. Unless the string is smoking, discard compromised holiday lights in a plastic wastebasket while you test the remaining strings. While testing lights, it is tempting to try to isolate the “burnt bulb” in instances where a string won’t light, but it gets frustrating quickly and is mostly a waste of time, so just discard those strings as well.

Once you have tested all of the strings, bag up the unsafe, compromised or otherwise unusable strings and throw them in the trash outside. For lights that are true fire hazards, place them in a disposable metal box – often home stores and hardware stores will have one set up for just this purpose during the holiday season.

Replenish and Replace. Most contemporary holiday lights are light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which provide numerous advantages over the incandescent lights we have all gotten used to. They require very little energy to operate and they last a long time. Because modern holiday lighting has gotten relatively inexpensive, it is worthwhile to invest in these lights. They will last for years without the burnouts or potential safety compromises that are a danger with pre-LED strings of lights, even those that are just a few years old. Holiday lights will almost certainly be part of pre-holiday sales, so watch for ads and then take advantage of special offers.

Once you find lights you like, lay in an adequate supply for your plans. As a rule, a six-foot tree should accommodate about 300 lights. Obviously, if you use lights beyond the tree, that increases the number of lights to have available. It is not necessary that lights match – they often look charming when they don’t – but that is the decorator’s decision. Be sure to get lights with a string color that matches the branches of the tree – typically green – and be sure to get lights with one male plug and one female plug.

Make a File. Be sure that your holiday lights are manufactured by a reputable manufacturer. If they are, they should be accompanied by a guarantee. Register the lights if they are packaged with a registration card (often you can do so online), and keep a copy of the registration, the dated sales receipt, and the specifications and instructions together in a paper or electronic file devoted to decorating for the holidays. This is also a great place to store snapshots of how the lights looked once you strung them, in case you want to refer to that in the future.

Light the Tree. We believe in conservation at Urban Home, so these instructions refer to artificial trees. For live trees, remember that LED lights, while the safest choice for lighting, are nonetheless electric, and practice appropriate safety measures.

Lighting on a Christmas tree looks best when it adds dimensionality to the tree without detracting from other ornamentation. Lights should travel from the trunk to the branches and back again, with no noticeable spots that are too dark or too bright. That said, the tree needn’t look perfect, as part of the charm and tradition of a Christmas tree is the story it tells of the family. So don’t get too uptight about wrapping the lights. Focus instead on following these simple basic instructions and the tree will look good.

Artificial trees assemble in layers, often color coded, with the widest branches logically at the bottom of the tree and moving upwards to the shortest branches and, eventually, the crown of the tree. Wrap each layer of the tree as you assemble it, beginning at the trunk and loosely wrapping each branch clockwise. Once you reach the end of the branch, move the string clockwise to the next branch and wrap back towards the trunk. Follow this pattern with each layer of branches, attaching one string to the previous via the female plug that should be at the end of each string of lights. Always work trunk to branch, crossing over from branch to trunk, crossing over again from trunk to branch, and always work clockwise both for wrapping the lights and for progressing through the branches. This is simple and effective, looks lovely when lit, and then when the sad day dawns to take down the decorations, you only have to reverse the process.

Store the Lights. It is tempting to store lights in their boxes but unless you work on a lighting assembly line, it’s a nearly impossible task. A simple low-tech project is a better solution to storing the lights. Note: you can do this project during an off-moment during the holidays, so that your storage solution is waiting when the time comes. Safely use an X-Acto knife or box cutter to cut one of the cardboard shipping boxes that arrives during the holidays into rectangles approximately 14 inches by 7 inches. Make a stack of them; it is no harm to have too many and annoying to come up short. Safely use the knife/cutter to cut a slit approximately 2 inches long at each of the opposing corners of the long side of the rectangle.

As you unstring the lights by reversing the process in the Light the Tree step above, wrap them loosely around your arm. Unplug each string as you go, and deposit each loosely coiled string of lights on a table. Watch for any faulty lights as you go; it is best to dispose of bad strings if any now rather than waiting until next Christmas. Once you have unstrung and coiled all of the usable lights and disposed of any unsafe or otherwise unusable ones, write down how many strings there are on an index card. Store the card in the paper or electronic holiday decorating folder from the Make a File step above.

Using one cardboard rectangle per string of lights, insert one plug end of one light string into one of the slits in the cardboard and, working from there, wrap the lights around the short side of the cardboard, working up the surface of the cardboard as you go. It is okay if the wrapping overlaps a bit as it is virtually impossible for lights to get tangled with this method. Secure the remaining plug end of the light string in the other slit. Store the carded lights in a box or plastic tub large enough to allow them to lie flat. If the lights are affixed with figural caps or other accessories, remove these if the design of the lights allows and place them in a plastic bag; mark the cardboard containing the lights that matches these fixtures. Do not store lights where there is noticeable moisture or extremes of cold or heat, and do not place anything heavy on the box/tub containing the lights.