Enter our Holiday Lights Contest by midnight!

Got your holiday bling on? It seems like everybody does.

Decorating for Christmas is not only a tradition; it's also a big business. This year, Americans are expected to spend $6 billion on holiday decorations, according to the National Retail Federation. In comparison, they spent $1.9 billion in 2000.

I saw this blurb move across the wires this week and my first reaction was, I'm a horrible Scrooge because I only spent $20 to put up five strands of white lights on my house (plus a wreath "repurposed" from my parents).

My second thought was: I wonder if the Daily Herald's Holiday Lights Contest was behind this big surge in decoration sales. (You can still enter through Sunday night, at our contest website.)

But seriously, like all journalists, odd information fascinates me, so I decided to dig a little deeper.

What's behind our urge to decorate? A look at some very in-depth and dense scientific research has shown that exterior decorations connect us better to our community and make us appear more sociable. OK ….

Other researchers suggest there might be a Christmas lights addiction fueled by a desire to one-up neighbors.

Hmmm. This endeavor seems to be turning into a discovery of the obvious. Or something I could learn just by watching a rerun of "Christmas Vacation."

I switched tactics and started hunting for the goofy.

To my eternal disappointment, I could not find any credible scientific research to support my theory that people who like blinking lights are nuts, those who like only white lights are elitists, and those who favor bubble lights are super cool. Not that I'm biased ...

There also isn't any scientific research into what is the most common curse words spit out as we untangle miles of twisted cords or discover, once we've hung lights with precision, that one strand doesn't work.

I did find out that you can burn about 90 calories an hour hanging Christmas lights, though that fact doesn't seems super useful since the massive holiday-cookie consumption starts long after the lights are hung.

So it turns out, after a couple hours of intense, backbreaking Googling, I conclude there doesn't appear to be any super-huge mystery or conspiracy associated with holiday decorations. They're pretty and we just like to put 'em up. Go figure.

But I thought I'd share some facts about holiday lights I found along the way. I hope you enjoy.

<h3 class="breakHead">Christmas lights facts</h3>

<B>1882</B>: Edward Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white and blue bulbs and wound them around a rotating evergreen tree. Johnson was a colleague of Thomas Edison.

<B>1895</B>: President Grover Cleveland set up a Christmas tree with lights.

<B>1895</B>: A telephone operator employee came up with the idea of mini-holiday lights while staring at a switchboard, but they didn't become popular until the 1970s.

<B>1903</B>: Modern Christmas lights were created with screw-in bulbs by the American Eveready Co. Before that, those who wanted Christmas lights had to hire an electrician to wire together lights like beads on a string. It's estimated having lights hand-strung by these specialists would have cost $2,000 in today's dollars.

<B>1904</B>: First recorded use of Christmas lights outside was in San Diego, Calif.

<B>1917</B>: 15-year-old Albert Sadacca had the idea, after a tragic fire in New York, that his parents should start making electric lights for trees. Only 100 strings sold the first year. The next year, he suggested painting bulbs in different colors and the NOMA Electric Co. became the largest Christmas lights company in the world. In 1946, NOMA invented bubble lights. The company went bankrupt in 1965.

<B>1930</B>: Blinking lights were introduced.

<B>1956</B>: Rockefeller Center Christmas tree started using modern electric lights.

<B>1998</B>: LED Christmas lights started to become popular because they were brighter and more energy-efficient. The first LED (light-emitting diode) was invented in 1907. For years, most LED lights were used in commercial applications, such as TVs or road hazard signs.

<B>2005</B>: Carson Williams garners national attention for synchronizing his holiday lights to music using 88 Light-O-Rama channels to control 16,000 lights.

<B>2006</B>: The White House Christmas tree's lights were 100 percent LED.

Daily Herald Holiday Lights Contest

The deadline for entering the Daily Herald's Holiday Lights Contest is midnight tonight! The winner will get a snowblower valued at $800. You can vote on the entries starting Monday. For full details, click

here.