Christmas card history
Christmas card history
Christmas card history
The sending of seasonal messages of goodwill is a truly ancient ritual with plenty of practical implications.
Isolated villages would send seasonal gifts to their neighbours as it paid to be polite to people who might feed you if supplies ran short.
In Pagan Britain, good luck charms were exchanged at the winter solstice but it took a long time for the custom to evolve.
The start of greetings cards as we now know them really came in the fourteenth century with the advent of wood-block printed New Year's cards from Germany.
In the fifteenth century, cultured, religious Germans would present New Year gifts called 'Andachtsbilder'. These were a greetings card complete with a printed devotional picture for the home. They were often decorated with a scroll and the Christ Child bearing a cross with the inscription 'Ein gut selig jar', meaning 'A good and blessed year.'
Even though the greetings card had German origins, our modern day Christmas card can be deemed a quintessentially English invention as the first real Christmas greeting cards were almost certainly the "Christmas Pieces" made by children in the early 18th century.
School children would write affectionate and often rhyming messages to their families on special paper with an engraved border and then decorate them further before taking or sending them home.
These engraved Christmas papers are now rare and extremely sought after examples of children's artwork and can be viewed as a kind of "sampler' as they were designed to show their parents how well their handwriting improved over the past year. By 1820 color was added to the engraved borders, making the pieces much more decorative.
The use of note paper and matching envelopes with decorative designs printed on them, was another early custom. It is logical to think that the invention of the Christmas card was a natural progression from these early Christmas traditions and the customs associated with Calling cards and Valentine cards.
The first Christmas card
Our modern day greeting card can trace its origin to a card printed in December 1843 at the instigation of Sir Henry Cole, first director London's Victoria and Albert Museum.
Sir Henry would hand write greetings and best wishes to his family, friends, and acquaintances on sheets of paper decorated with Christmas themes or generic holiday cards to which the specific holiday could be added.
Sir Henry felt this was most inefficient so he commissioned a Christmas card with a single message that could be duplicated and sent to everyone on his list.
The card was produced with the Words "A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU" written across a banner covering the bottom half. This expression was to become the "standard' Christmas card message.
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These first cards were extremely expensive and sold for 1 shilling (5p) each which was equivalent to a man's wages for one week. Sadly only twelve of these first cards are known to have survived to the present day.
Royal Mail
Despite the fact the first card was effectively censored, the practice of sending cards caught on in England aided by the Postal Act of 1840, which allowed a piece of mail to be sent anywhere in the United Kingdom for just one penny.
Prior to the "Penny Post", postage was based on mileage and had to be paid for by the recipient upon delivery. With the postage act, the sender could pay the postage at a single rate.
In 1844 another Christmas card was put on sale illustrating the 'Spirit of Christmas'. This one was produced by W.C.T. Dobson and sold many more copies than Horsley's card had the year before. The Christmas card's popularity had begun.
Just a few years later, in 1848, W.M. Edgley produced a card similar to Horsley's, with much the same rustic frame of gnarled wood and ivy. However, this card had the first inclusion of holly on a Christmas card. The greeting was the same but used the archaic spelling 'Christmass'.
The 1850s saw an increasingly mobile population as more people than ever before moved from the countryside to work in the new industrial towns. Christmas cards were a great way to stay in touch with family during a time of change and uncertainty.
Although Christmas cards were already popular, 1870 saw the start of a cheaper postal service that really made them a part of everyone's lives. It was now affordable to send mail home and people took to greetings cards like never before.
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