The First Electric Christmas Tree Lights Were Red, White & Blue

Before there were tangled strings of lights stuffed in attic boxes everywhere, Christmas trees glowed with actual fire. Candles clipped to branches. In wooden houses. What could possibly go wrong?

Enter Edward H. Johnson, a vice president at Edison Electric Light Company and the man who decided there had to be a better way to celebrate without burning down the living room.

80 Bulbs, One Visionary, Zero Fires

On December 22, 1882, Johnson unveiled something New York had never seen. He'd hand-wired 80 small electric light bulbs—colored red, white, and blue—and strung them around a Christmas tree in his Manhattan parlor. But he didn't stop there. The tree itself rotated on a motorized base, making the whole display a spinning spectacle of patriotic illumination.

A reporter from the Detroit Post and Tribune described the scene in wonder, noting how the tree "weights and revolves" while "presenting a continuous twinkling of red, white, and blue colors."

The Press Wasn't Buying It

Here's the twist: not everyone was impressed. Several newspapers dismissed Johnson's creation as a publicity stunt for Edison's electric company. Which, honestly, it probably was. But that doesn't make it any less revolutionary.

The skepticism made sense. Electric lighting was still a novelty in 1882—Edison had only opened his first commercial power station on Pearl Street in Manhattan just a few months earlier. Most Americans had never seen an electric light, let alone 80 of them twinkling on a tree.

From Curiosity to Christmas Staple

Electric Christmas lights remained a luxury for years. Each bulb had to be hand-wired by electricians, making a single string cost what would be hundreds of dollars today. Only the wealthy could afford them—President Grover Cleveland famously had an electrically lit tree in the White House in 1895, which may be where the "1895" date sometimes gets confused with the true first.

It wasn't until 1903, when General Electric began selling pre-assembled light strings, that ordinary families could even consider electric decorations. And even then, renting a strand for the holidays was common because buying one outright was still too expensive.

Why This Matters

Johnson's 1882 tree marks the moment Christmas decorating began its transformation from a fire hazard to a competitive neighborhood sport. Those 80 hand-wired bulbs evolved into:

• The 150 million light sets Americans buy annually
• Elaborate synchronized displays with tens of thousands of bulbs
• The LED revolution that cut energy use by 90%
• Smart lights you can control from your phone

All because one Edison employee thought, what if the tree didn't burn the house down this year?

Edward Johnson never became a household name like his boss. But every time you plug in a string of Christmas lights without worrying about flames, you're living in the world he imagined—one glowing bulb at a time.