Thanksgiving is over, and Advent has begun. We are officially in the Christmas season! Crank up the carols and pour yourself a cup of peppermint mocha. It’s time to indulge in your favorite holiday traditions. One of the most popular traditions for this season is sending Christmas cards. Every Christmas, Americans send around 1.3 billion cards. It is a tradition born out of a desire to save time that birthed an entire industry.
The first Christmas card was sent in Britain in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. The Victorian era had strict rules of social decorum, one of which was that it was rude not to respond to a letter. Sir Cole was a popular man. The new penny post that he had helped create led to him having an increasingly large stack of unanswered letters at the holidays.
Not having time to answer each letter with a lengthy personal response, he commissioned J.C. Horsley to make an illustration of a family celebrating the holidays with images of people helping the poor on either side. There was a blank space to insert the recipient’s name, with the greeting “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” He had a thousand of them printed on stiff cardboard.
Soon, a few other prominent Victorians copied Cole’s time-saving idea. However, it took a few decades for the trend to really catch on. The first American Christmas card was created by Louis Prang in 1875. It was a drawing of a flower with the simple message “Merry Christmas.” Christmas cards soon became a collectible form of art with companies sponsoring design competitions and newspapers reviewing each year’s batch of available cards.
The book fold card started in 1915 with postcard printer Joyce Hall, who wanted to give people more room to write without having to compose an entire letter. His brother Rollie and William joined him in the business, and the Hall Brothers Company eventually became Hallmark.
Almost 200 years later, the Christmas card is still viewed as an excellent way for people to keep in touch and show a little love to the people in their lives at the holidays. Whether you order personalized photocards or pick up a box of one of the 2,000 different Hallmark designs, don’t forget to send them soon so they arrive in time for the holiday.
Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.
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