Lighting Your Home with Lights From the Past

How neat is it that we can enjoy the same warm glow from Christmas lights as others have forty, fifty or even more years ago? Here are 2 vintage foil electric candles that we just listed in our Etsy shop:





This is just a small taste of the vintage Christmas lights available. There are Christmas strands in beautiful pastel colors and old bubble or "snowball" lights as well as nifty novelty bulbs that date back to the 20s and 30s. The earliest examples can be quite expensive, particularly the intact theme strands like the original Disney Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, but you can find these foil candles and other Christmas lights and strands from the 50s and 60s at much more accessible prices. Cindy Chipps and Greg Olson wrote a great guide to this collectible lights called "Collector's Encyclopedia of Electric Christmas Lighting Identification & Values" which really gives you a great idea of the wide variety available.

We also recently acquired these two midcentury santa novelty bulbs, which we will be putting into inventory soon:





If you do plan on using these old electric lights do be careful and check the wires carefully. Items like the foil candles can be rewired but be sure to follow directions on the light kits. Just to be safe pleae do not leave vintage lights on while unattended.