The streets begin to shine and the soft Christmas music begins to play on the sidewalks. They are timeless images. The streets and avenues have been decorated with bright lights for hundreds of years and there is no reason to think that this could change in the next hundred years. Fortunately, the magic of Christmas takes time to change.
It may seem that some things never change. The familiarity of Christmas traditions adds to the warmth and charm of Christmas. However, when it comes to Christmas lighting, this is definitely not the case. Christmas lights have changed dramatically over the years. It’s remarkable and wonderful that changes in technology haven’t done much to alter the time-honored aesthetic of a sparkling best christmas light clips Christmas view.
Historically, each string of Christmas lights had individual bulbs. Each bulb was individually hand-screwed onto the string. There was a time when these lights were wired in such a way that if one light bulb went out, the entire string wouldn’t light up. As expected, it was not a very efficient system. Individual bulbs were expensive and constantly needed to be replaced. The strings of lights were heavy but fragile and cumbersome to set up. The technology related to lighting has advanced considerably and consequently, so has the Christmas lighting that we use at Christmas. Most modern Christmas lights are made from tiny LED lights. These lights are small, lightweight, (recently) inexpensive, and very energy efficient. In fact, a recent study conducted in Germany and published in the New York Times claims that these lights are five times more energy efficient (from manufacture to disposal) than their predecessors. Saving money over the holidays certainly adds to the holiday cheer. Small LED lights are also great for creating wonderful focal pieces, such as large balls of light and large stars of light. These focal pieces are starting to get very popular and are a surprising addition to your festive lighting scheme. At one time these specialty lights were very expensive, but now they can be found reasonably priced at Ikea or other local department stores.
In fact, it is the time of festive Christmas lighting. Our homes and communities will be decorated as they have been decorated for centuries. Everything will be beautiful. Everything could look the same. However, with new technology, Christmas lights have changed for the better.