The Christmas lights enjoyed today have a fascinating history spanning over 140 years. Anza Valley Outlook/Diane Sieker photo
Twinkling from living room trees to neighborhood light shows, electric Christmas lights are so entwined with the season it’s easy to forget how new the tradition is - and how deliberate its beginnings were.The story starts with two familiar names: Thomas Edison and his colleague Edward H. Johnson. Edison, who perfected a practical incandescent bulb in 1879, is credited with stringing electric lights outside his Menlo Park laboratory around Christmas 1880, a publicity-minded glimpse of what electric illumination could do.It was Edward H. Johnson, however, who is commonly credited with the first electric Christmas tree inside a home. On Dec. 22, 1882, the vice president of Edison’s company “hand-wired 80 red, white, and blue light bulbs” and wound them around a revolving tree
