Electric Lights on a Christmas Tree? The Tale of a Glowing History

Dec. 22, 1882: Looking at Christmas in a New Light

1882: An inventive New Yorker finds a brilliant application for electric lights and becomes the first person to use them as Christmas tree decorations.

Edward H. Johnson, who toiled for Thomas Edison’s Illumination Company and later became a company vice president, used 80 small red, white and blue electric bulbs, strung together along a single power cord, to light the Christmas tree in his New York home. Some sources credit Edison himself with being the first to use electric lights as Christmas decorations, when he strung them around his laboratory in 1880.

Sticking them on the tree was Johnson’s idea, though. It was a mere three years after Edison had demonstrated that light bulbs were practical at all.

The idea of replacing the Christmas tree’s traditional wax candles — which had been around since the mid-17th century — with electric lights didn’t, umm, catch fire right away......http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1222johnson-creates-christmas-lights

By Terry Long
Source: Wired.com

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Victorian Christmas Found in Jonesboro

In addition to being made famous by Margaret Mitchell in "Gone with the Wind," Jonesboro also holds other great treasures of the past.

Take some time this Christmas season and treat yourself to a Victorian Christmas at Stately Oaks Plantation.

Stately Oaks Plantation is an 1839 Greek Revival style home which is chock full of history. Christmas season hours are 10 am -4 pm.

For more information, go to http://www.historicaljonesboro.org/

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