Displays of colorful lights are a lovely holiday tradition. Come November, up and down the island chain, they glow and twinkle once the sun sets.
Extravagant designs adorn houses and businesses lining the Overseas Highway. Decorated boats chug along in lighted parades.
A few years back, a new holiday tradition began when a group of secret elves scaled the walls of the Pacet Channel Viaduct, a section of the Old Seven Mile Bridge, rigged up a generator and decorated the most famous tree in the Florida Keys, Fred.
Of all the holiday traditions — the Christmas tree, decorations, songs, egg nog, festive gatherings and fruitcake – the flickering holiday lights were the last to come into fashion. While some things have changed over the years, others have not, as a Dec. 24, 1925, story printed in a local newspaper called “Christmas in Key West” reveals. Though written a century ago, the description of Keys Christmas Eve celebrations strikes a familiar chord: “The night before Christmas, the fun begins for the merrymakers when they go house to house sipping wine and partaking of home made fruit cake, making hasty calls on their friends or stepping to quick jazz music where a party might be in progress.”
The holidays are still a time when friends gather to eat and drink and sometimes dance – though maybe not so much to jazz anymore. Like the food and the music, the holiday lights have changed, too. It used to be all about candles. Even Christmas trees were decorated with actual candles. In 1882, Edward Johnson, vice president of the Edison Light Co., was the first person to string a Christmas tree with electric lights. Two years later iIn 1894, the first official White House Christmas Tree was trimmed with electric lights.
In 1903, the General Electric Co. began manufacturing and selling strings of holiday lights, advertised as Edison Miniature Lamps. They were not cheap, so it wasn’t until the 1920s and 1930s that it became common practice to string colorful electric lights around the Christmas tree. Festooning the outside of the home and yard was growing in popularity, too. It started with the red, green and white bulbs outlining doors and windows. Holiday-themed cardboard silhouettes sometimes decorated the yard or the porch. In 1934, a black-and-white photograph of a spartan holiday scene in a Key West yard was news.
The use of candles did not flicker out overnight, though. Key West’s Chief Baker warned against the practice in a December 1938 newspaper article:. “I particularly warn against the practice of lighted candles in the trees. Almost every tree is now decorated with strings of electric lights, but in some instances candles are still used and are dangerous.”
A Dec. 19, 1953, local newspaper story attempted to explain the globe-trotting itinerary of Santa Claus, and how he traveled around the world on a special plane that sounded a great deal like a helicopter. The article also delivered one of the classic “back when I was growing up” stories parents and grandparents like to tell: “You youngsters should be thankful that you live in this modern age of fast transportation and up-to-date methods. We had to light our Christmas tree with colored wax candles, which would burn for only about 20 minutes. Then we had to put new candles in the tin candle holders.”
Festive holiday lighting is no longer just a string or two of red, white and green lights hung around a tree. Homes, yards, boats and even golf carts become holiday spectacles. Up and down the island chain, friends gather for food and drink, very little fruitcake and maybe a little dancing until their cheeks are glowing like Rudolph’s nose. At the end of the night, when everyone has gone home and it’s time to climb into bed, the festoons of colorful lights are turned off by a timer, a flip of a switch or a phone app, because we live in this modern age of fast transportation and up-to-date methods.
