Zahlen, bitte! All the lights are on thanks to electronic Christmas lighting

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"Every year, billions of lights illuminate the Christmas season in Germany. The use of lights for the festive season is almost as old as the light bulb itself. As a reminder, we have taken the liberty of updating an earlier Zahlen, bitte! and publishing it as Zahlen, bitte! classic. We hope you enjoy reading it!

Today, on December 24th, it's that time again: the Christmas tree will be put up by now at the latest, if it hasn't already adorned the living room long ago. Thanks to electric Christmas lights, the beautiful glow no longer carries the risk of burning down the semi-dry tree with a small light. They are almost as old as Edinson's patented light bulb.

Zahlen, bitte!

In this section, we present amazing, impressive, informative and funny figures ("Zahlen") from the fields of IT, science, art, business, politics and, of course, mathematics every Tuesday. The wordplay "Zahlen, bitte!" for a section about numbers is based on the ambiguity of the German word "Zahlen." On one hand, "Zahlen" can be understood as a noun in the sense of digits and numerical values, which fits the theme of the section. On the other hand, the phrase "Zahlen, bitte!" is reminiscent of a waiter's request in a restaurant or bar when they are asked to bring the bill. Through this association, the section acquires a playful and slightly humorous undertone that catches the readers' attention and makes them curious about the presented numbers and facts.

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The New York Times reported on December 21, 1880 – just eleven months after the patent for the light bulb was granted to the ingenious and resourceful US inventor Thomas Alva Edison – of a string of 290 lights. It stretched from the train station to Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. However, apart from the temporal connection, it is not yet entirely clear whether it had a Christmas connection.

First Christmas tree with electric lights

The first Christmas tree with electric Christmas candles appeared two years later: on Christmas Day 1882, it was Edward Johnson, Edison's friend and Vice President of the Edison Electric Light Company, who had his technicians put up an electric Christmas tree in his living room. It was quite stately and decorated with a string of 80 electric Christmas tree candles. They lit up in the colors of the US flag - blue, white and red - and the tree also rotated slowly on its own axis.

For New York, where only a fraction of households had an electricity connection at the time, the advertising effect was as if Johnson had put an opulent Cybertruck in front of his garage. The glow of electric light bulbs, which had only been around for three years, attracted enormous attention. A miracle generated from electricity and light and much more fire-safe than the wax candles that were otherwise commonly used.

E-marketing delights the reporters

In 1884, the New York Time was delighted to count 120 lights on the tree. To enable reporters to spread the good news nationwide, Johnson invited journalists to his home every Christmas.

There was a catch with the tree: Christmas trees of this kind were expensive. In addition to the fairy lights, which could not simply be bought at the DIY store, those who could afford it needed a "wireman" to put up the fairy lights, and if the household did not have a power connection, a generator was required.

This meant that a Christmas tree could cost 300 dollars or more to run: adjusted for inflation, that would be just under 10,000 dollars today. A price that only the very wealthy could afford, which is why such a tree was often arranged as a status symbol. The first Christmas tree with electric Christmas candles shone in the White House from 1894 – during Grover Cleveland's time in office.