CHEMISTRY SAVES CHRISTMAS, ENHANCES HANUKKAH, and LIGHTS UP THE SOLSTICE

 

Or,

 

Exploring the Science Behind the Lights and the Tinsel.

 

 

Before delving into the science behind Holiday decorations, it might be well to briefly review some of the history behind the traditions. As Christianity spread through Eurasia, the indigenous religious symbols were incorporated into nativity celebrations. Wreaths, garlands, mistletoe, holly, laurels, and evergreen trees symbolized everlasting life and were important elements of the pre-Christian winter solstice celebrations. In time these became part of the Christian tradition.

 

The Christmas Tree was an ancient German tradition which became part of the Christian celebrations. By 1755 they were becoming popular in other parts of Europe. The earliest tree decorations consisted of fruits, candies, gilded nuts, marzipan cakes, strings of glass beads, dolls, and other small toys.

 

Except among German immigrants, there were no Christmas trees in colonial America. Evergreen boughs, garlands, wreaths and ropes made of intertwined spruce branches were brought indoors for decoration. Colorful fruits such as bright red apples, winter berries, and dried herbs were incorporated into the decorations to provide splashes of color among the greenery. Each year Colonial Williamsburg re-creates many of these types of decorations much to the delight of thousands of visitors.

 

The Christmas tree did not become hugely popular outside of the German-speaking world until 1841. Prince Albert, Queen Victorias German born husband, set up a Christmas tree for their children. The tree was decorated with candles, gingerbread, candies and fruits. When the popular magazines printed pictures of the tree, it created a widespread demand for Christmas trees on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

In colonial and early New Jersey there were a great number of different ethnic groups each of whom had their own Holiday traditions. The English brought the tradition of the Wassail to the New World. The traditional Wassail punch was a mixture of wine, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and nutmeg but poorer families substituted ale and a mix of less expensive spices. Among the ethnic Dutch, the Feast of Saint Nicolas on December 6^th was the traditional time for feasting, gift-giving, and merriment. (After gaining independence from Spain in 1581, the Protestant Dutch tried to eliminate this Catholic feast but backed down after facing rebellious young children.) It is widely believed that Philadelphias Mummers Parade originally arose from the traditional Santa Lucia celebrations brought to the New World by the regions Swedish settlers.

 

In many parts of the western world, glass ornaments began to replace edible decorations on trees in the mid-1800s. For most of the latter half of the 1800s, the majority of Christmas ornaments were imported from Germany where producing them was a cottage industry. The craft was also practiced in Poland and Czecho-Solovakia.

 

In a family workshop the father traditionally formed the desired shape from glass tubing. While balls and bells were the most common shapes, molds made of plaster or metal allowed shapes like hunting horns, pipes, and birds to be produced. The children usually had the task of pouring a silver nitrate mirroring solution into the ornament. It was allowed it to dry overnight and then dipped into highly colored lacquer. The lacquer coat was kept thin so that the silvering showed through and imparted a luster. After again being allowed to dry, it was trimmed with bits of ribbon or lace.

 

The United States imported not just its Christmas ornaments but most of its laboratory glassware from Germany. The city of Jena in central Germany on the river Saale was the main center of labware production. With the outbreak of the First World War this source was cut off. American glass producers were forced to learn specialized production techniques for first time.

 

After the war, it would appear that the production of both toys and Christmas ornaments recovered fairly quickly. In 1912, Germany produced 524,680,000 ornaments and toys. In the first half of 1921, 374,668,000 ornaments and toys were manufactured.

 

The Second World War again interrupted the supply of specialty glasses not just ornaments. The American war effort demanded precision optical glass for binoculars, cameras, bomb-sights, and periscopes as well as laboratory glass for the expanding defense industries. Corning Glass took the lead in developing replacements and soon was able to supply borosilicate and other specialty glasses. After the war, Cornings expanded production capabilities and increased technical know-how allowed the company to become the first large volume manufacturer of holiday ornaments in the United States.

 

Today the typical glass Christmas ball begins as a ribbon of uncolored molten glass. As the ribbon passes over a mold, a stream of compressed air forces the glass into a mold. As with the earlier hand crafted ornaments, a silvering solution is applied to the interior of the ball and a coat of lacquer to the exterior.

 

Shiny reflective surfaces have always been part of the holiday traditions. In the special Christmas markets set up in European cities, it was possible to buy thin sheets of gold for gilding almonds and other types of nuts.

 

In the English-speaking world, the first mention of tinsel as a decoration occurs in the early 1500s. At that time the word referred to gold or silver threads woven into cloth, a brocade or such threads, or a thin coating or gold or silver overlaying fabric.

 

By the late 1700s tinsel also came to refer to any type of thin metallic plates cut into strips and used for decorating. Less expensive metals such as copper, brass, lead, and tin were available in addition to the more costly silver and gold. It was also about this time that the word tinsel came to have connotations of cheapness, gaudiness, or superficiality. In 1782 John Knox wrote that:

The character of a man of integrity and benevolence is far more desirable than that of a man of pleasure or of fashion. The one is like solid gold, the other like tinsel.

 

The astute reader (and most readers of the Indicator are astute) will have noticed that the word tinsel was applied to a type of shiny decoration several hundred years before tin was actually used in the manufacture of tinsel. The Oxford English Dictionary offers no explanation. The English word Òtin dates to the 1200s and tinsel to the 1300s. This would seem a logical progression except that the original definition of tinsel was a loss or setback. Perhaps in this instance tinsel referred to the loss of shine as tin metal oxidized?.

 

Whatever the origin of the term, thin strips of metal and the open flames of holiday lights were not a safe combination. On December 26^th, 1900, Timothy Bahnsen of New York was visiting his brother in Saint Louis. When the tinsel on the tree caught fire, Bahnsen suffered what appears to have been an heart attack and was dead within minutes.

 

Lead foil strips were less prone to catch fire but did present a risk from poisoning. Another approach tried in an effort to reduce the fire risk, was to create tinsel consisting of thin layers of aluminum on a cellulose acetate substrate. While theoretically less flammable than aluminum powder, this material could be ignited with a match or even catch fire from the radiant heat of a fireplace.

 

Metallic pigments on fire-proof organic films and metallic coatings on paper were tried but were not price competitive with lead foil.

 

Then in 1969 a new method of creating tinsel from multiple layers of thin film was developed. Individual layers of iridescent films consisted of a flame-proof thermoplastic resin between 0.05 and 1.0 microns thick. Layers of a transparent polymer were placed between these so that in the final product only about 20% of the material used was actually iridescent. For maximum shine it was found that the refractive index of each layer should vary about 0.03 from that of the next closest.

 

For the maximum shine and reflectance, it would be hard to beat a Christmas tree made entirely of aluminum. The most popular aluminum Christmas trees were sold under the Evergleam name between 1959 and the early 1970s.

 

In December of 1958 a sales manager for the Aluminum Specialty Company of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, first noticed a metal Christmas tree displayed in a Chicago department store. The tree was made by Modern Coatings, Inc. of Chicago. But it was too expensive and bulky for wide distribution. In only three months time, Aluminum Specialtys engineering department had their own metal tree ready in time for the March 1959 American Toy Fair. Although it was an huge gamble, Aluminum Specialty went on to produce several hundred thousands of trees in time for the 1959 holiday season. The buyer for the Ben Franklin Department Stores, Tom Gannon, deserves much of the credit for the trees success as he took the risk of buying the trees before anyone knew if they would prove to be popular. They were popular, sales took off and more than one million Evergleams were sold during the 1960s.

 

By the middle of the 1960s Aluminum Specialty was manufacturing trees year round. Although about 75-80% of all Evergleams were silver, the company also made trees in other colors. Trees came in a variety of sizes from two to eight feet high.

 

Developing the Evergleam tree required some sophisticated metallurgy. According to Richard Thomsen, one of the engineers who developed the tree, pieces of aluminum had to be formed in such a way as to create a branch that was approximately 3.5 inches wide but that would also compress small enough to package in a 1-inch diameter paper tube. When the tree was disassembled for storage the branches had to be removed from the trunk and packed back into the tubes. An entire eight foot high tree with 120 removable branches weighed no more than ten pounds and could be stored in a small box. The branches are so resilient that when removed from their storage tubes, they still pop out to full size even after 50 years.

 

Thomson describes the tree as having, lots of pizzaz, with a light, and a revolving stand.

 

Of all holiday symbols lights are the most ancient. Most religious traditions in the northern hemisphere mark the solstice in some way. During the time that Christianity was a minority religion within the Roman Empire, Church leaders decided that the solstice was an appropriate time to commemorate the Nativity. The Empires state religion observed the Saturnalia, a time of feasting and gaiety, at the solstice. This decision provided protective coloration to the early Christian communities during their own celebrations.

 

Hanukah, the festival of lights, is also linked to the solstice though this occurred in a somewhat more convoluted process.

 

Antiochus, the king of Syria, conquered Judea in 170 BC. He forbade worship in the Temple and stole the menorah, or sacred lamp, from the altar. At the solstice, the Syrians rededicated the Temple to a Pagan deity. Rebels lead by Judah the Maccabee retook Jerusalem. They restored the temple and lit the menorah exactly three years after the flame had been extinguished.

 

When the Rebels searched the temple storerooms for sacred oil to burn in the Menorah there was only enough for one day. But the flames miraculously lasted for eight. The celebration of Hanukah commemorates the rededication of the temple and the miracle of the lamps.

 

Before electric lights became available, candles were attached directly to the branches of Christmas Trees. To guard against fire, the candles were usually lit for only a short time on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. At first candles were held to the branches with bits of wire but in 1867 Charles Kirchhoff of Newark, New Jersey, patented a counter weighted candle-holder that had a balance weight suspended below the branch. About a decade later, a much lighter spring-loaded clip candle-holder was patented by Frederick Arzt of New York.

 

Lamps consisting of a colored glass globe provided an alternative to candles in the late 1800s. The glass globe was hung from the tree branch by a loop of wire. At the bottom was a small pool of water with a layer of oil floating on top. A small wick sat in the oil. They were somewhat safer than candles since the flame was contained entirely within the globe. Some of these lamps were quite elaborate with fanciful shapes and bright colors. Lamps featuring Queen Victorias coat of arms are especially prized by ornament collectors. At the low end of the market, walnut or other types of nut-shells were sometimes filled with oil and a fitted with floating wick.

 

Thomas Edison created the first outdoor Holiday Light Spectacular at his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory in 1880. The light display was placed where it could be seen from the Pennsylvania Railroad. The display featured a square half-mile of open fields filled with row upon row of plain white post, each topped with an incandescent lamp and a glass globe. It took 11 dynamos to power the display. Five miles of wire were required to connect all of the lights.

 

Edisons light show was intended primarily to promote his plan to electrify downtown Manhattan. The display was after all in full view of the New York to Philadelphia main railroad line. According to press reports at the time Edison sensed that identifying his lights with the holiday might further suggest that a wondrous new age was about to unfold.

 

The first indoor Christmas tree to have electric lights was in the Manhattan home of Edward H. Johnson, a friend and longtime business associate of Edison. The tree was installed in 1882 and had red, white, and blue electric lights. It was described as "presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect," with "eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs ... all the lights going out and being relit."

 

The tree was mounted on a revolving base. Contacts built into the base opened and closed as the tree revolved. Ironically, the tree was turned by a small steam engine in the cellar of the house.

 

The next year the first electrically powered menorah was installed in the home of another of Edisons associates.

 

General Electric bought the rights to manufacture holiday lights in 1890 but they made only the bulbs and the sockets. A wireman was required to come into the home and connect the bulbs together. He then connected the string to the mains and after the holiday, the whole process had to be reversed. In 1903 the Ever Ready Company brought out the first strings of 28 connected bulbs. Machine-blown bulbs were introduced in 1919.

 

In 1921 Underwriters Laboratory published the first safety standards for holiday lights. Early light sets were wired in series so the loss of one bulb meant that the entire set went dark. General Electric introduced the first holiday lights to be wired in parallel in 1927.

 

The typical modern holiday light uses about 600 milliamps of electricity. In what may seem a step backwards, they are wired in series. An electrical shunt incorporated into the bulb holder is used to maintain continuity should an individual bulb burn out. During the 1990s high tech titanium and tungsten filaments were developed that made bulbs twice as bright as anything previously produced.

 

So this Holiday Season, dear reader, raise a beaker in toast the generations of craftsmen, inventors, and chemists who have brought light and sparkle to the darkest days of the year.