I am replacing a light fixture and am confused at all the wiring here. I have two red wires connected to ea other and two black wires connected to ea other. Besides that I have two white wires that were used to connect my old fixture which had two clear plastic covered copper wires. My new light fixture has 1 black and 1 white wire. How should this fixture be connected to the proper wires? The house was built in 1977. An early reply would be appreciated... I'm in darkness.
:confused:

It sounds like a 3 way switch set up, where the light can be controlled by either of 2 switches. There are several ways to connect them that will work. I am not familiar with one that has the light connected to 2 white wires, but if that is the way the old one worked, connect the new one the same way. It would be best if you could identify one pair of white wires as always connected to ground and connect the white wire of the new fixture to it. Convention is to connect the outside of the light socket to the white wire which is grounded in a 120 volt circuit. With the power off, you could check for continuity between each pair of white wires and the ground wire.

Thank you for your reply labman. The light can be controlled by either of 2 switches. We wired it as before. Works fine... so far.