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The primitive custom of illuminating the Christmas holidays had its beginnings in the 18th century, when German citizens with a high economic and social level began to decorate the facades of their houses when these dates arrived.
With this they demonstrated to their neighbors, apart from their joy at the arrival of Christmas, their great economic power.
At first they decorated only the facades with the placement of paper garlands and lanterns with candles (there was no electric light then), later, the decorations also entered the interior of their homes.
With the arrival of electricity, starting in the 1880s, they changed the lighting of the facades from garlands with candles to using incipient electric lighting.
The idea was received with admiration by the British colony that lived displaced in Germany who, apart from beginning to follow their customs, transmitted it to their relatives residing in the United Kingdom, who not only adopted the idea, but also transmitted it to them. to his relatives who lived in North America and Australia, commenting on German customs.
Both the citizens of the islands and the citizens who had emigrated quickly adopted the idea of ??decoration during the rule of Queen Victoria and the German idea of ??decorating their homes for Christmas spread throughout those overseas territories.
The first building in the world to be fully electrified was the Savoy Theatre, which, in 1882, placed around 1,200 light bulbs known as fairy lights on its façade, supplied by Sir Joseph Swan, the inventor of the light bulb. incandescent.
Since 1882, the term “Fairy lights” has been used in the United Kingdom for this type of lighting. And, aware of this tradition, the American citizen Edward Hibberd Johnson, inventor and vice president of the Edison Electric Light Company, decided, in 1882, to put the first electrically illuminated Christmas tree in the garden of his house on Fifth Avenue in New York. Hibberd adorned the tree with 80 red, white and blue light bulbs, which had been wired by hand.
In 1895, Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th president of the United States, who had learned of Grover’s idea, ordered the illuminated Christmas tree to be placed in front of the White House, which has been placed continuously every year since. after year when the Christmas holidays arrive in this location.
The fever of illuminating the streets dates back to 1920, when, on the city street of Pasadena, the first large-scale lighting installation was carried out on Santa Rosa Avenue. Soon the Pasadena idea became popular in other North American cities.
The popular explosion of decorating the facades of department stores and the interior of houses did not reach Spain until the mid-20th century.
Not only did private homes set up the nativity scene inside their home when Christmas arrived, but when the first fir trees began to arrive at the Christmas markets, families began to place them in the dining room of their homes, copying foreign customs.
The main stores that had also copied the customs began to decorate their facades with lights to encourage customers to come in and buy gifts for those dates. The Baron Dandy massage for men and colognes for ladies according to their personal taste, began to be given as gifts for Santa Claus.
The children still hardly knew Santa Claus and were content to receive the small gifts on Christmas Day that the Caga Tió brought in Catalonia and the toys of the Three Wise Men in January throughout Spain. But they also began correspondence with Lapland with Santa Claus’s shelter.
The first to decorate their facades, as was logical, were the Jorba Stores, which, in addition, installed a monumental Fir Tree in front of the main door.
Its direct competitor was El Corte Inglés, which began to decorate the shop windows and the façade with the placement of large dioramas and lights that reached their splendor with the expansion of the Ronda de San Pedro building with Plaza Catalunya and the presentation of the great montages that they made with their spectacular Cortylandia.
A spectacle of light, color and sound that was surpassed every year and that at that time was put on in the most important shopping centers in the provincial capitals where El Corte Inglés was installed, which had been created to attract children, but which Older people also enjoyed the show.
But the best of the holidays was yet to come, the businesses that wanted to showed their joy by decorating their facades during the holidays.
Only older people remember that center of the city, with the figure of the urban people (there were no traffic lights then) who were located in central places controlling traffic. These agents, located in the center of the intersections, daily collected a large number of gifts that the transporters of commercial houses, service companies and private citizens left them, they stopped their vehicle and from inside they took out the corresponding gift and left it to their feet.
Over the years, when the Christmas holidays arrived, the city’s merchant associations thought about what to do to attract customers to the surroundings of their businesses and to achieve more sales like department stores did.
The merchants on Petritxol Street, seeing that when the Christmas holidays arrived, instead of visitors going up, they were going down, decided to decorate the street with lights and garlands to attract customers.
This is how the first decorated street in the city of Barcelona was born in 1957 and all the shops on the street, especially the La Ampurdanesa and Dulcinea chocolate shops, were grateful for it, because that year the number of customers at their establishments increased again.
Petritxol Street was the first street with lighting in the city of Barcelona, ??but later there were other streets that, through the initiative of merchant associations, followed the example of Christmas lighting.
The first street to be illuminated at Christmas came by Celestino Viola Dalmau. He was a young man who had started as an apprentice at the Florida perfumery in Ronda de Sant Pere and who, in 1926, the businessman Tomás Bonin Armstrong put in charge of the gift shop, with leather goods, watchmaking and perfumery sections, American House, in 56 Pelayo Street. In 1931, due to its success, it remodeled the business, converting it into Pelayo Perfumery.
Subsequently, many streets and squares have been added to the celebration of these Christmas festivities. Thus, until we reach 2023, when 104 km of lights have been turned on to create a Christmas atmosphere.
Happy Holidays!
