Each year Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season. Retail stores roll out massive sales while shoppers hunt for the perfect gifts. It’s also the time boxes full of lights and decorations come out of storage for another holiday season. The race is on to beat the looming snowfalls to put up outdoor decorations, a national tradition started in Denver more than 115 years ago.
In 1914, four-year-old David Jonathan Sturgeon laid in his bed, too sick to enjoy Christmas Eve with his family. His father, David Dwight “D.D.” Sturgeon, a budding electrician, wanted to do something to cheer up his sick son. Sturgeon had the idea to paint a string of light bulbs green and red, and hang them in a pine tree outside young David’s window. Not only did this bring joy to the sick boy, but word spread quickly through the neighborhood, attracting many people to come see the first outdoor display of Christmas lights.
The practice of putting lights outside for the Christmas holiday caught on quickly. Denver Post reporter Frances “Pinky” Wayne wrote about the festive display, bringing a tremendous amount of attention to the glowing tree. Pinky was such a proponent of the idea, she would later promote a local outdoor lighting contest, furthering the adoption of outdoor displays.
The use of outdoor lights grew rapidly and in 1919 city electrician John Malpiede started changing the Civic Center Park light posts to green and red bulbs for the holidays. With the success of the colored light posts, Malpiede soon began adding lights and other decorations in front of the State Capitol, starting with a lighted Christmas tree in 1920. Each year he would acquire more lights and decorations, expanding the display.
The lighted decorations continued to gain popularity. Governor Benjamin Stapleton gave Malpiede $400 and permission to decorate the City Hall in 1926. The tradition continued every Christmas and by the late 1920’s Denver was known as the Christmas Capitol of the World.
The display would eventually move from the State Capitol to the new City and County Building. When Malpiede retired in 1956, the display had grown to 17 miles of electrical wire with 25,000 colored bulbs. The tradition lives on today with the annual lighting after Thanksgiving, known as the “Grand Illumination”.
David Sturgeon, who started the outdoor lighting practice, would go on to build Sturgeon Electric, a Colorado based company still in operation today providing commercial and industrial electrical construction services to the western half of the United States.
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