Christmas lights

In the United States, Canada and Europe, it became popular to outline private homes with such Christmas lights in tract housing starting in the 1960s.

By the late 20th century, the custom had also been adopted in other nations, including outside the Western world, notably in Japan and Hong Kong.

[8][9] In the Western Christian world, the two traditional days when Christmas lights are removed are Twelfth Night and Candlemas, the latter of which ends the Christmas-Epiphany season in some denominations.

[2][1] The Christmas tree was adopted in upper-class homes in 18th-century Germany, where it was occasionally decorated with candles, which at the time was a comparatively expensive light source.

The illuminated Christmas tree became established in the UK during Queen Victoria's reign, and through emigration spread to North America and Australia.

He proudly displayed his Christmas tree, which was hand-wired with 80 red, white and blue electric incandescent light bulbs the size of walnuts, in December 1882 at his home near Fifth Avenue in New York City.

[18] However, it was published by a Detroit newspaper reporter,[16][17] and Johnson has become widely regarded as the Father of Electric Christmas Tree 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.

The first recorded uses of Christmas lights on outdoor trees occurred in San Diego in 1904; Appleton, Wisconsin, in 1909; and New York City in 1912.

[24][25] In Canada, archival photos taken in 1956 around suburban Toronto capture several instances of outdoor evergreens illuminated with Christmas lights.

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.

[29] In 1973, during an oil shortage triggered by an embargo by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (later OPEC), President Nixon asked Americans not to put up Christmas lights to conserve energy use.

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.

Fairy lights), through to full blown animated tableaux, involving complex illuminated animatronics and statues.

Common lamp types are incandescent light bulbs and now light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are being increasingly encouraged as being more energy efficient.

[34] Even the white lights, which were typically single-chip LEDs, glowed with a faintly yellowish color that made them look cheap and unattractive according to the general public at the time.

[36] A familiar pastime during the holiday season is to drive or walk around neighborhoods in the evening to see the lights displayed on homes.

In Pakistan, fairy lights are often used to decorate in celebration of Eid ul-Fitr at Chaand Raat, which occurs at the end of Ramadan.

[40] The region began importing discarded lights c. 1990 in part because of its cheap labor and low environmental standards.

[40] As late as 2009, many factories burned the lights to melt the plastic and retrieve the copper wire, releasing toxic fumes into the environment.

[40] A safer technique was developed that involved chopping the lights into a fine sand-like consistency, mixing it with water and vibrating the slurry on a table causing the different elements to separate out, similar to the process of panning for gold.

[43] This scrap value is primarily derived from the recycling value of the copper found inside the wire, and to a lesser degree, other metals and alloys.

As an example, a standard 20 feet (6.1 m) strand of modern incandescent Christmas lights weighing about 0.72 Lbs (0.33 kilo) was found to have less than 20% recoverable copper by weight.

These and other 3D displays may be bare-frame, or be covered with garland, looped and woven transparent plastic cord or acrylic, or natural or goldtone-painted vines.

Some places make huge displays of these during December, such as Callaway Gardens, Life University, and Lake Lanier Islands in the U.S. state of Georgia.

In east Tennessee, the cities of Chattanooga, Sevierville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg have light sculptures up all winter.

This is used for things such as snowflakes falling, Santa Claus waving, a peace dove flapping its wings, or train wheels rolling.