<P> A paper lantern is a lantern made of thin, brightly colored paper . Paper lanterns come in various shapes and sizes, as well as various methods of construction . In their simplest form, they are simply a paper bag with a candle placed inside, although more complicated lanterns consist of a collapsible bamboo or metal frame of hoops covered with tough paper . Sometimes, other lanterns can be made out of colored silk (usually red) or vinyl . Silk lanterns are also collapsible with a metal expander and are decorated with Chinese characters and / or designs . The vinyl lanterns are more durable; they can resist rain, sunlight, and wind . Paper lanterns do not last very long, they soon break, and silk lanterns last longer . The gold paper on them will soon fade away to a pale white, and the red silk will become a mix between pink and red . </P> <P> There does not appear to be any authoritative publication on the history or origin of the paper lantern available to the lay researcher (via Google.com, Wikipedia.org & Google Scholar searches, i.e.). In fact, until the publication of an updated scholarship in 2016, the most recent academic quality research on the more fundamental subject of the history of paper was a volume in an edited series on Chinese technology and invention first published in 1949 . This volume, however, copyrighted the inevitable conclusions derived from recent discoveries that fundamentally changed the inherited story of paper, reordering our understanding of how and why this material came to be a fundamental medium for the transmission and understanding of human society . </P> <P> Paper, it appears, was used for a wide variety of decorative and commercial functions (including the manufacture of lanterns) for more than two hundred years before the famous innovator Cai Lun, previously revered as the inventor of paper by received Chinese History, popularized its use as a medium for the recording of general information . While writing appears on the oldest known samples of paper, as labeling, advertising and prayer, it appears that Cai Lun's contribution to the story of paper is in generalizing this use for all types of knowledge and records . </P> <P> It is, however, in these original uses of paper as medium for advertisement and prayer that the Chinese paper lantern first found its light . Before books were ever written on paper (wood or bamboo blocks were the preferred material for general knowledge and record - keeping at the time), the hopes and dreams of Chinese Buddhists were signified in the light of paper lanterns, often decorated with the stylized characters which communicated those thoughts to those who could not bear audial witness to their formation . To these Buddhist monks of the early Han Dynasty, roughly one hundred and fifty years before the epoch defining deaths of Caesar Augustus and Jesus of Nazareth, the glow of candlelight within the paper walls of the lantern became a miniature version of the bonfires, lit with the walls of their fortress abbeys on ceremonial occasions, which, in turn, symbolized the light of their pious thoughts, emanating outward to illuminate the ignorance of the unenlightened world . As they studied and recorded and analyzed the world around them, protected from the harsh opinions of the wild world by the walls of their fortresses, so did the candle consume its fuel, sheltered from the winds while projecting its light to the world beyond . </P>

What continent celebrates christmas by lighting their houses with paper lanterns