Were outdoor Christmas lights popularized in Colorado?
Yes. A Denver electrician helped launch the Christmas tradition of outdoor light displays in 1914, History Colorado says.
admin
Yes.
The tradition of hanging colored lights outside homes for Christmas originated in Denver in 1914 when a local electrician found a creative way to bring holiday cheer to his bedridden son.
David Dwight Sturgeon dipped lights in red and green paint, strung them on an electric wire, and hung them around a pine tree for his ailing son to admire from his bedroom window. Soon neighbors began making their own outdoor light displays, and Denver Post coverage helped spread the practice through the city.
While Sturgeon wasn’t the first person to display outdoor Christmas lights, the tradition he inspired in Denver is the first known instance of outdoor home Christmas lights becoming widespread in any city, according to History Colorado researchers.
Outdoor Christmas light displays took off nationally in the 1920s, when inexpensive outdoor holiday lights became widely available in stores for the first time.
See full source list below.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
The Colorado Sun partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
