Holiday lighting technology was originally developed to replace candles. At first, only used during the Christmas holidays, modern electric light arrays have become popular around the world in many cultures for both religious festivals and other purposes unconnected to religious festivities.
The First Bulbs – Incandescent Holiday Lights
Incandescent light bulbs were the most commonly used holiday lights until recently. These lights produce a broad-spectrum white light. To get different colors of light some early Japanese lights used colored glass while American-made lights were colored by coating the glass with a translucent paint which acts as a color filter. Older bulbs were also coated on the insides of the bulbs to prevent fading or flaking from exposure to weather, but were more costly to manufacture.
Transition to LEDs
Light-emitting diode (LED) lights have gained popularity in many places due to their low energy usage (about one tenth the energy used by incandescent bulbs), very long lifetimes, and low maintenance.
There are two types of LEDs: colored LEDs and white LEDs. Colored LEDs emit a specific color of light. The plastic bulb may be shaped and colored for cosmetic reasons, but does not substantially affect the color of the light. Holiday lights of this type do not fade because the light is determined by the LED’s chip rather than the bulb. White LEDs utilize a two-stage process to create the white light.
- In the first stage, the LED produces a broad spectrum white light.
- In the second stage, some of the blue and violet-blue light is absorbed by a chemical paint which glows yellow.
This process imitates the broad spectrum of colors which our eyes perceive as “white”. It is essentially the same process used in fluorescent lamps.
Other Holiday Lighting Technology
Fiber Optic Lights – Fiber optic technology is also used in holiday lighting; usually incorporated into artificial Christmas trees. Incandescent lamps or LEDs are located in the tree base and many optic fibers extend from the lamps to the ends of the tree branches.
Bubble lights with Motion – Bubble lights are a type of incandescent novelty light popular during the 1950s. Their main feature is a sealed glass tube with colored liquid inside that bubbles due to the heat created by an incandescent light. While the idea was first demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, the Christmas lights were invented by Carl Otis in 1935. Bubble lights can still be purchased online and in stores to this day.
Light Sculptures – First used for public displays on lampposts, street lights, and telephone poles, light sculptures are made of lights mounted on frames. Public displays often have outdoor-rated garland on the frame as well, making them very decorative even in the daytime. Places where notable displays of light sculptures may be seen include Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. By the 1990s light sculptures were being made in smaller form with miniature lights for home use. These now tend to come with a plastic sheet backing printed in the proper design. Newer models employ nearly photographic quality graphics. On an even smaller scale, one of the most popular light sculptures is the sparkleball. Sparkleballs are handmade globes made from threading holiday lights into a sphere built of plastic cups. Usually spotted individually on front porches at Christmas, the residents of North Yale Avenue in Fullerton, California have made a holiday tradition of hanging 450 sparkleballs from the trees lining their street.
Ornamented Lights – Early bulbs were sometimes made in shapes and painted in the same way that glass ornaments are. These were typically pressed glass like much of the common dishware at the time. These are reproduced in very limited quantity nowadays, typically found only at specialty retailers and online. Metal reflectors were also added to bulbs until the 1970s. These had a center hub of paperboard which then had tabs that pressed between the bulb and the socket. Mid-century, light sets began coming with petal “reflectors” which refracted the light and focused it in beams. Miniature lights sets can also have attached ornaments and certain sets can have more than one bulb per ornament, such as for snowmen and candy canes which are long. And LED lights now come molded into shapes.
Advanced Light Shows with Control Technology
Holiday lights can be animated using special “flasher” or interrupter bulbs (usually a red tipped replacement bulb included with the set) or by electronic controller. Controllers can be set up to change flashing or animation styles by pressing a button or turning a dial on the unit; others have only one pattern, but the speed of this pattern can usually be adjusted by turning a similar dial.
Computer-controlled holiday displays are becoming more and more common today. Most rely on a separate computer (usually a PC) to send real-time sequences of commands. This setup is strictly a do-it-yourself project because there aren’t any commercial hardware or software products available. Fiber-optic holiday lighting can also be animated electronically, particularly when the set incorporates LEDs. When an incandescent lamp is used, animation can be created by means of a rotating color wheel.
There’s a new control technology being developed in Ottawa, Canada that enables multiple homes to link up over the Internet in-real time. A central Web site initiates the timing using Network Time Protocol to keep the local computers synchronized, and each location has a program that controls a USB device to which each home’s holiday lights are connected. In this way, anyone online can plug in to this network and at their discretion, working independently or synchronized, engage their holiday light display on a global level.