We love Christmas vintage. The delicate glass rocket birds with their springy legs and tree clips. The slightly chippy paper mache Nativity figures. The flannel stockings. We can love our vintage Christmas, from the time we unwrap them from their tissue paper until the moment we wrap them up again for their long summer’s rest. But we can’t love everything that’s vintage for christmas. At the risk of being branded a giant holiday buzzkill, here are some common safety issues with vintage Christmas decor so everyone can enjoy their Christmas decor safely.
Christmas Lighting
Aside from candles, live Christmas trees themselves caused an average of 150 house fires a year between 2017-2021, per the National Fire Protection Association. Lighting equipment or electrical distribution equipment (extension cords) were involved in 41% of those fires. Interestingly, the majority of those fires are in January. The dryer a tree gets, the more combustible it becomes.
The danger with older incandescent Christmas bulbs is they throw off heat. Serious enough heat that they can melt the needles on an artificial tree and perhaps ignite a dried out natural tree. Rule of thumb, if you’re not in the room with older bulbs that throw heat, unplug them.
As for the electrical dangers with vintage light strings (and vintage extension cords), a basic safety check will get you past those.
- Are the wires flexible?
- Are there any bare spots on the cord?
- Are all the bulbs and sockets well connected?
- Are there any missing bulbs?
- Is the plug polarized?
- Does the plug have a fuse?
- Are you using inside bulbs inside and outside bulbs outside?
- Were they tested for safety by a reputable testing laboratory?
The same basic self-preservation rule applies to both vintage light strings and potato salad at a summer picnic: when in doubt throw them out.
The early LED fairy lights were nasty. Their icy blue-white light was better suited to an interrogation than a cozy Christmas. But even an ardent vintage purist will admit the current generation of LED lights are: 1) nowhere near as offensive; 2) wildly more energy-efficient and 3) ridiculously convenient because you can safely plug together enough strings to make Clark Griswold weep with joy.
If you are lucky enough to have a vintage aluminum Christmas trees, hopefully, you have one of those amazing rotating color wheel lamps as well. According to Retro Renovation, aluminum trees were not designed to be used with strings of lights. An exposed wire or short has the potential to make the entire tree an electrocution hazard. You don’t have to have a vintage color wheel to go with your vintage tree, by the way. There are many reproductions available and when it comes to electrical things, reproduction vs. true vintage isn’t a bad thing.
And finally, if you’re running extension cords, and heaven knows you are, make sure they are rated for the load you are asking them to handle, don’t overload them or the outlets they are plugged into, and place them so they are not a trip hazard.
So that’s how lighting figures into using vintage Christmas decor safely, but of course there are other hazards.
Unexpected Christmas Chemistry
We stopped using tinsel a few years ago when it was decided the decorative value didn’t warrant the time and aggravation of picking it all off before the tree was composted. In my kidhood, we carefully removed the tinsel and draped it on a sheet of cardboard to use year after year. Who knew that tinsel we were plucking was made of lead? According to an article in the Atlantic, the lead was perhaps less a hazard than the aluminum that preceded it, which was highly flammable. Lead was banned by the FDA in 1972, now tinsel is made of mylar or another plastic. But if you have the old stuff hanging around, best not to eat any of it.
Speaking of lead, if you have vintage small metal figurines, there is a good chance those are lead as well. They’re not dangerous to look at, certainly, but should not be chewed on by small humans or animals (as if any figurines were good to chew on).
Bubble lights are fun and charming. Who knew they were filled with methylene chloride? Those little bubble tubes of happiness can poison you if you break them and inhale the fumes, get it on your skin or swallow it. Although probably not if you break just one, according to the National Capital Poison Center.
And finally, if you have vintage decorations from the 1940s or before and it has fake snow, there is a possibility that fluffy white stuff is asbestos. Hard to imagine, but boxes of asbestos fake snow used to be marketed for its lack of flammability. FYI, that snow that wakes Dorothy up in The Wizard of Oz…yeah…asbestos…according to the UK Asbestos Training Association.
Note: If you have one of those flocked 1960s aluminum trees, you can exhale. The flocking is NOT, repeat, NOT asbestos.
Wrapping it up
We’re not touching these potential perils: various holiday plants that can make you or your pets ill, salmonella poisoning from genuine raw egg eggnog, falling off the ladder while stringing lights on your gables, getting caught regifting something that was already regifted to you, or having to actually eat a piece of fruitcake.
Almost anything can be dangerous if you think too hard about it. With vintage Christmas decor, try and let your common sense win out over your nostalgic. Giving up our old incandescent Christmas lights a few years ago felt awful, but now I don’t miss them.
Now get out there and have yourself a merry vintage little Christmas! Those popcorn garlands are not going to string themselves.
10 comments
Gee, I was pretty much with you to the end. I happen to really like GOOD fruitcake and would be happy to eat the piece you turn down!
Duly noted. Key word being GOOD. The assumption was made that most of us only have come across HORRIFYING fruit cake and were exposed to it at a time when the Twinkie was our most admired pastry dessert so that we have zero positive memories associated with fruitcake.
Or to elaborate on Laurie’s point about re-gifting….the worst is the fruitcake that’s been re-gifted so often it qualifies as a doorstop.
My Mom’s bridge group had one that was passed around for over a decade! Obviously, they weren’t dealing with fruitcake that fell into the GOOD category. 🙂
Do you remember putting angel hair on the tree? I think that stuff was made of fiberglass, it itched like crazy when you handled it. Never mind what a hassle it was to remove it!
Oh gosh! I had forgotten all about that angel hair! I remember that vividly now that you mention it. As well as the tinsel mentioned in the post and the (sorry Paul!) the dreaded fruitcake. How fun it all was!
Merry Vintage Christmas!
Laurie, you’ve opened a Pandora’s Box of fun! Do you remember taking deep sniffs of your doll’s newly minted plastic smell?? I loved that smell because that meant she was brand new! I wonder what that’s done to us? In our house we had all of th aformentioned perils and fortunately went through each Christmas unscathed. Perhaps it’s because Ma prayed every night because she didn’t like electricity or gas stoves. Great posting! We want more!
Mary Ellen, I love the smell of new plastic to this day! Thanks for the buzz kill, I mean insightful, post, Laurie! 🙂
we have always been amazed and admirers of American style for Xmas Tree and Christmas nativityHome decor that we used to see on TV series during the Holidays:) thank you for another interesting article.
Who knew Christmas decorating was so fraught with danger? I think I will stick to collecting Shiny Brite ornaments…oh wait, mercury glass! Great article, Laurie!
Those candles might not be usable, but oh! that box sure is!