Sending Christmas Wishes
Although the electronic age is beginning to replace the signing, addressing, and sending of paper Christmas cards, many people hold onto this custom with fervor. They’ll carefully choose a design that represents their favorite interpretation of the holiday, and add greetings for the friends and family that will receive it as a welcome connection to loved ones both near and far.
Christmas Cards
The distinction of having created the first Christmas card is usually given to John Calcott Horsley of England. Horsley printed his card in 1843 for Sir Henry Cole, the friend who had given him the idea. The card looked much like a postcard and consisted of three panels.
The central panel pictured the typical English family of the day enjoying the holiday (this panel caused some controversy, as it showed a child drinking wine). The other panels depicted acts of charity, so important to the Victorian Christmas spirit. The card’s inscription read “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” A thousand copies of the card were printed, selling for one shilling apiece.
But around the same time, two other men, W. A. Dobson and Reverend Edward Bradley, were designing cards and sending them to their friends. These cards, however, were handmade instead of printed, which is why the credit generally goes to Horsley.
Christmas cards, which tended not to be particularly religious, soon became the popular means of sending holiday greetings among the Victorians. The launch of the penny post in 1840 made it affordable for people to send greetings by mail, and the invention of the steam press made mass production of these cards possible.
Festive Fact
At one time in Britain, the Post Office (also known as the Royal Mail) delivered on Christmas Day, which is when most people received their cards. As could be expected, this process soon became too much for postal workers, who eventually got the day off.
Across the water in America, the Christmas card was popularized by the firm of Marcus Ward & Co., and later by Louis Prang, a German-born printer and lithographer. Prang first turned his talents toward Christmas cards in 1875, designing and printing them from his Roxbury, Massachusetts, shop. Prang created chromos, as he called the colored lithographs, in eight colors. His cards depicted Nativity scenes, family Christmas gatherings, nature scenes, and later, Santa.
The beauty of Prang’s cards did much to ensure their popularity, but so did his marketing technique. He would hold contests all across the country, offering prizes for the best card designs, which spurred public interest. Prang’s cards went strong until 1890, when the states began importing cheaper cards from German manufacturers. Americans reclaimed the market 20 years later.
Christmas Seals
Christmas Spirit
The Christmas Seal is popular in America largely due to the efforts of Emily Bissell, state secretary of the Red Cross in Wilmington, Delaware. Word of the success of the seal in Scandinavia had spread to America, and Bissell sought to use such a seal to keep a local tuberculosis treatment center open.
Like Easter, Christmas has a special seal dedicated to helping those in need. The Christmas Seal, which changes in design each year, was originated in Denmark in 1903 by postal worker Einar Holboell, who felt there should be a special stamp to benefit tuberculosis sufferers. The first seal was printed in 1904, with a picture of Queen Louise of Denmark; more than four million were sold. Sweden followed suit that same year, and Norway had its own seals by 1905.
The original American Seal, designed in 1907 by Emily Bissell, pictured holly, a cross, and the words “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.” By 1908, the Christmas Seal was circulating nationwide for the benefit of various charities. In 1919, the National Tuberculosis Association (later the American Lung Association) became the seal’s sole beneficiary. That same year, the double-barred Cross of Lorraine became the seal’s signature element.
Christmas Stamps
Christmas stamps, not to be confused with Christmas Seals, are issued seasonally by the post offices of various countries to give the mail some holiday spirit. The stamps generally feature different religious or secular Christmas scenes each year, and are often eagerly awaited by stamp collectors.
The very first Christmas stamps were printed in Canada in 1898; the United States did not have its own until 1962. For some years, the most popular stamp in U.S. history — until the Elvis stamp came along in the 1990s — was a Christmas stamp picturing a reproduction of the Renaissance painting The Adoration of the Shepherds, by the Italian painter Giorgione; more than one billion were printed.
