When did blue become a Christmas colour?

Yes, I know Elvis Presley sang about a "Blue Christmas" but he was looking with dread towards a loveless season of abject misery. We weren't supposed to be aspiring to a few winter weeks of glacial, icy, freezing, cheerless blue. But the good burghers of Ealing, west London (where I'm writing this) , Vancouver, some arrondissements of Paris and various other spots across the globe don't seem to know this. 

Blue lights are draped over trees, atop department stores, across shopping malls and in houses on either side of the Atlantic. They are awful and I speak as one whose favourite colour has always been blue. But it doesn't belong at Christmas. Energy saving 'led' lights are blue, I am told. And when they first appeared on the scene several years ago, they were. But since then we have red and green and gold. After all, if we can put a man on the....etc etc, well surely we can make some  energy friendly white gold lights?

When I lived in Chicago, the small white/gold lights covered the trees on Michigan Avenue and were known as Italian lights. They cover New York's Tavern on the Green year round and give off magic and warmth. And they are all over the 'historical centres' of most Italian towns at this time of year. I'm guessing at a market ploy for the garish bright blue.  The poor old consumer couldn't be allowed to go through the ritual of pulling out the old white lights, testing them, finding out which bulbs had failed, replacing them so a new colour was foisted upon the public and the poor old public bought it. Too bad...like many adults, despite the inevitable disappointment and cynicism that will eventually accompany the season, I still find the first days of Christmas lights in even the most depressed centre to be strangely cheering. But a lot less so when they are the colour of an Alaskan iceberg