Christmas Greeting Card - The History of the Christmas Card

During the holiday season, one of the biggest traditions most families have is the annual mailing of Christmas cards.  There's the arduous process of gathering together the addresses and names of those who you want to send an envelope full of Christmas joy, then selecting the card, signing each one, addressing each envelope, buying the stamps, then making the trip to the post office that signifies the task is complete.  This long process has a rich history, with the Christmas greeting card having been around since 1843.

People, for a long time, had exchanged holiday greetings, both as card, handwritten notes, and in small tags on gifts.  With the inventions and advancements of the postal system, many began transmitting these by post, often congesting the normal flow of mail, causing many postal routes to hire additional help for the holiday season.  Before 1843, there were no commercially created Christmas cards.  Any Christmas cards that were sent before that year were hand made by the sender specifically for the recipient.  Sir Henry Cole changed that in 1843.

Cole was a prominent inventor in 1800s England.  He oversaw the construction of Albert Hall and helped to further advance the postal system in Victorian England, to name only a few of his accolades.  To help remind his friends what the holidays were supposed to be about, Cole commissioned an illustrator and printer to create 1,000 printed Christmas cards that he could send to his friends and family.  His original idea was to spread the idea of helping the needy during the holidays, so hi card, divided into three panels, depicted a man feeding the poor, a festive holiday party with adults and children, and the final panel showing a woman helping to place a blanket on a poor man.  He sent these card to his friends and family for the Christmas of 1843, with the greeting "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year To You."  The first Christmas greeting card was painted by John Calcott Horsley,

The card, while it had such a generous concept and positive message, was regarded with a certain degree of scorn during the tolerance movement in England.  The issue was not the helping of the poor, but rather the central image, showing a holiday party with both adults and children.  In the image, the adult were drinkings glasses of wine and the children were enjoying a sip for the holiday party.  Due to the criticism he faced from that central image, he did not have another card commissioned the next year.  But, many other people did. 

Following Cole's original idea, many others began to have their own personalized Christmas cards designed and printed, and the concept quickly became popular in England and Germany, finally crossing the Atlantic to the United States in 1875.  Louis Prang, a German living in Boston, became known as the father of the American Christmas card, creating the first professionally printed Christmas greeting card in 1875.  He was a lithographer by trade.  His cards were expensive, and later, far cheaper, German imports quickly drove him out of business.

Early Christmas cards did not have the familiar imagery we know today.  While thoughts of Christmas turn our mind towards Santa Claus, reindeer, the Christmas tree, candy canes, and baby Jesus, the early Christmas cards displayed no such imagery. The early Christmas cards, especially those created by Prang in the United States featured imagry of elaborate floral arrangements, many of which didn't even contain flowers we thinks of as going with the holiday season, such as roses, geraniums, and apple blossoms. 

The United States finally go into the Christmas greeting card game around the start of World War I. 

 

Going Green This Christmas

While statistics vary depending on who you talk to, there are between 1 and 2 billion Christmas cards sent in the United States alone.  Figures put that at between 150,000 and 300,000 trees each year going to the Christmas card and envelope alone.  Many of these cards wind up wasted and in landfills, generating a large amount of paper waste for a time honored tradition.  While the though of halting the annual trial of sending out stacks of Christmas cards may sound nice, there are a number of highly environmental solutions to keep this time honored tradition going stong.

1. Only Use Recycled Cards-  It is a good start.  Many card companies now offer cards that are produced on 100 percent recycled paper.  These are more environmentally friendly, purely because they do not cause any additional damage to the environment.
   
   
2. Go Digital-  The advent of the personal computer and the Internet has led to a new potential, the Christmas E-Card.  These are e-mails featuring animation and images regarding the holiday season.  These tend to be a lot fancier than the standard Christmas card, take less time to prepare, require no paper, leaves no recycling process for the recipient, and, here's the best part, most of them are free.  All the recipient needs is an e-mail address.
   
   
3. Include Some Advice-  While many people may not think of this, in the greeing your write on the inside, include a cleaver saying reminding the recipient they should recycle their Christmas cards.  While it may be unconventional, it could help prevent a large amount of paper waste from winding up in a landfill. 

Christmas is the number one holiday for card sales in the United States.  Just taking a few extra steps can help to

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