In 1924, when the first switch was pulled on the first holiday lighting display at East Cleveland’s NELA Park — shorthand for the National Electric Lamp Association — the results were modest: “a small collection of lights illuminating holiday cutouts and a few decorations,” reports cleveland.com’s Paris Wolfe. At the time, “fewer than 50 percent of American homes were using electricity, thus making GE’s work a genuine novelty,” she noted.