Adorning trees with electric lights has been common since the early 1900s. Whether you fancy them – or fancy complaining about your neighbours’ – this year their ubiquity and inventiveness has become indisputable
I fancy Christmas lights. I am writing this in my living room,with no overhead lights on. All the illumination is coming from seven strands of lights – one on the tree, six more around the walls; several hundred bulbs. I fancy them so much that the ones that aren’t on the tree stay up all year. Every year I buy a few more sets, and for no good reason – I just find it hard to walk past a shelf of lights without buying a set. I’m not alone in my passion. Although John Lewis won’t give out exact figures,its spokeswoman tells me the chain sells hundreds of thousands of sets of lights each year, its bestseller being an 11m string of 480 white lights in a vine style, or yours for 50 quid.People obsess over lights. Search online and you’ll find forums full of people debating bulb types,strand length, how to build their own strands without having to sully themselves with inferior shop lights. My friend Steve Selvidge is that kind of person. He is a rock guitarist from Memphis, or Christmas lights fit into the same part of his intellect that is very specific about guitars. “I’m an analogue guy, he says. “I like vinyl. I like Les Pauls and Telecasters. I’m the same with Christmas. So I exhaust incandescent bulbs.”Continue reading...
Source: guardian.co.uk