CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

It must be getting close to Christmas as Richard (of RBB) has sent out his annual Christmas letter which was up to its usual form. This year it seems to me that Christmas isn't making much of an impact as compared to other years. Are we over it?

Robert in his soon to be deleted blog post .......

FATHER CHRISTMAS IS NOT REAL. SO WHAT THEN

 ... laments the demise of Father Christmas and wonders if Christmas in entirety will disappear (at least I think that's what he said but with Robert's posts - who knows?)


In The Altered States of America the Trumps have lit up the White House lights thereby making a better target for the North Koreans and others and will no doubt be saying a lot of prayers.

"Take your best shot Little Rocket Man, I'll be in Florida" - Donald Trump

In the past The Curmudgeon, as part of CURMUDGEONS INCⓒ's creed of bringing useful and informative facts to our readers has posted histories of some Christmas institutions. See below:



CHRISTMAS CARDS


CHRISTMAS TREES


CHRISTMAS CRACKERS


CHRISTMAS LETTERS

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Today we'll look at the history of Christmas lights.

Auckland has a whole street in Ponsonby where almost all of the residents light up their houses at Christmas. This has over the years developed into a tradition and people come from miles around to view them.

Generally these are done quite elegantly and not over-the-top kitsch like the yanks do:

Although to be fair, they can produce some elegant ones as well:

The origin of Christmas lights was in Northern Europe where Christmas is in mid winter and the days are short and the nights long. In the 1700s, way before electric and gas house and street lighting was invented, folks stayed indoors after nightfall because it was too difficult and dangerous to venture out.

The advent (see what I did there?) of the celebration of Christmas brought about a new tradition of distant relatives coming to visit. Invariably these visitors would turn up after daylight hours and, being unfamiliar with the places they came to visit would become hopelessly lost and often not found until the spring thaw. Something needed to be done.
Some bright spark (or more likely a candlemaker) came up with the idea of putting a candle or candles in the window so that the visitors could see the light.


AS LONG AS I CAN SEE THE LIGHT - JOHN FOGERTY

Soon everyone was doing this so, although it was safer for visitors there was no identification of the right house to be visited and many an unfortunate or embarrassing event ensued.

Eventually a solution was found and households developed their 'signatures' of different configurations of candles or lanterns in different windows. These were adapted with different colours and later, with the invention of gas and electric lighting the entire house could be lit up in a unique and interesting way thus guiding the visitors to the correct house.

Of course, in the case of unwelcome relatives the householder could pretend that they had run out of candles or the gas or electricity was off thus leaving the house in darkness.

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I trust that this was useful.