Ho! Ho! Ho! Merry Chistmas! Happy Yule!

Christmas Kids celebrates Christmas 365 days a year, but the most special day of course, is December 25th when Santa Claus comes to visit each child bringing gifts and the season's good cheer.

There's lot of fun things to do at Christmas Kids where you'll find educational and entertaining Christmas surprizes.

The History of Christmas Tree Lights as Decorations

It begins in pre-Christian times with the tradition of using small candles to light up the candlemas wreaths and tree in celebration of the Feast of Lights. From there the tradition found itself adapt to the Christmas season's celebration of the birth of Christ.

It is said that Martin Luther began the custom of putting candle lights onto trees. Until the late 19th century candles were the only decoration to light a Christmas tree.

Even though the tradition of using small candles to light up the Christmas tree dates back to ancient times, it still took two centuries for the tradition to become widely established first in Germany, and then spread to Eastern Europe.

Candles were glued the tree's and wreath's branches with melted wax and attached by pins. Around 1890, candleholders were first used for Christmas candles. From 1902 to 1914, small lanterns and glass balls were used to hold the candles.

Electricity for Yule

There were many experiments to create safe holders, from hoops in the 18th century to counter balanced metal holders and prettily decorated clips in the late 19th century. At the end of the century experiments with gas lights (many of which blew up!) and early electric lights were done. The first electrically lighted tree was done by Thomas Edison's protege, Edward Johnson, in America, in the 1880's.

In 1882, the first Christmas tree was lit with the use of electricity. Edward Johnson lit up a Christmas tree in New York City with eighty small electric light bulbs.

Later, Edward Johnson created the first string of electric Christmas lights and mass produced them around 1890.

By 1900, department stores started using the new Christmas lights for their Christmas displays light up all the gifts and Christmas flare they could manage.

Safe Christmas Lights

Albert Sadacca was fifteen in 1917, when he first got the idea to make safety Christmas lights for Christmas trees.

A tragic fire in New York City involving Christmas tree candles inspired Albert to invent electric Christmas lights. The Sadacca family sold ornamental novelty items including novelty lights.

Albert adapted some of the products into safe electric lights for Christmas trees. The first year only one hundred strings of white lights sold. The second year Sadacca used brightly colored bulbs and a multi-million dollar business took-off. Later, a company started by Albert Sadacca (and his two brothers Henri and Leon) called NOMA Electric Company became the largest Christmas lighting company in the world.

Germany created many attractive figural lights using the same technique as for making glass tree ornaments, but after World War I, milk glass lights, so called because the glass was a milky opaque white, were being made in Japan and America.

Some of the nicest lights made in America were made in the 1940's. Those made in the late 1930's and 1940's by the General Electric Company were licensed from Walt Disney. The Disney lights showed Silly Symphonies, Snow White, and later Cinderella.

There were also bubble lights which were little coloured glass tubes with an oil inside, which began to bubble as the light heated up. These were only sold for about ten years, but recently an American company began to market bubble lights again.

Give a Christmas Tree as a Christmas Gift