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n Some people are well organised and get the job outnof the way early, whereas others keep putting it off and leave it until thenlast minute. I’ll admit, I fall into the latter camp. It’s not a thing I enjoyndoing and I’m glad when it’s over and done with. What is it? Why, writing thenChristmas cards, of course. It has to be done, you know it does, and somenpeople take it as a personal affront if they don’t receive one and when we fallnout with someone, what’s the worst thing we can do? We can take them off ournChristmas card list.
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| The Star in the East card |
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nThat’s just about the worst slight we English can inflictnon our fellow Englishmen. You know we mean business when we knock you off ournChristmas card list. Forget vendettas, feuds, fisticuffs or a really sternnlook; if your name comes off the Christmas card list, you are beyond the pale,nyou are nothing to us, you may as well be dead.
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| The Kindly Robin card |
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nLike many other Christmasncustoms, we stole the idea of Christmas cards from our continental cousins. Itnwas a well-founded tradition for the French and Germans to send out New Yearnletters to their kith and kin at the turning of the year (the Germans also sentnout Namenstag cards, sent not on a birthday but on your namesake saint’snday); just a few lines to let them know how things were going and what you werenup to, and those Johnny Foreigners with lots of friends and relations came upnwith the idea of just writing one letter and getting it printed up and sent outnen masse. The English spotted this ruse and pinched it; it’s a thing wenare especially good at and it’s the reason that the sun never set on thenBritish Empire – as not even God would trust an Englishman in the dark.
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| Horsley’s prototype card – 1843 |
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nThenidea of a Christmas card came from Henry Cole, a civil servant responsible for,namongst other things, designing the Penny Black postage stamp. Colencommissioned the Royal Academician John Callcott Horsley to design a greetingncard for him in 1843, (his diary entry for November 17th 1843nincludes, “Mr. Horsley came and brought design for Christmas card”).
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| The First English Christmas Card – 1846 |
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nInn1846, Cole had one thousand cards lithographed and hand-coloured, which soldnfor one shilling each, issued under Cole’s pseudonym Felix Summerly, printed bynMr Jobbins of Warwick Court, Holborn, and sold by Cole’s friend, JosephnCundall, from his shop in Old Bond Street, London (see Cundall’s letter to Notesnand Queries of January 26th 1864, where he clearly states that ‘possiblynnot more’ than one thousand cards were sold – not the 2,500 as thenWikipedia article on Christmas Cards claims).
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| Cundall’s Letter to Notes and Queries – 1864 |
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| Detail of Horsley’s design – Moral Degeneracy in Action |
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nThe card was a single paste-board, the size of a lady’sncalling card, with Horsley’s Germanesque design of three panels, the side onesndepicting charitable acts and the central one showing a scene of a familyncelebrating with glasses of wine – which caused the Victorian abstainers tonobject that a little girl was being encouraged to drink alcohol because, as wenall know, pictures of children imbibing with their family on a Christmas cardnis the first step on the rocky road to drunkenness, debauchery, the gutter andnfar, far worse.
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| Christmas Frogs – What Else? |
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nAlthough Cole’s cards sold out, the idea didn’t really catch onnuntil about twenty years later, when playing-card manufacturers Charles Goodallnand Sons branched out into the greeting cards business, producing visiting-cardnstyle cards with the simple message ‘A Merry Christmas’.
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| A Christmas Pixie |
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nSoon after, robinsnbegan to appear, but the early Victorian card illustrations were notnparticularly festive – they featured fairies, animals, flowers and children,nand over the years far more bizarre images began to appear. Bicycles and steamnengines may not strike us as particularly Christmassy, but neither donscantily-clad nymphs or cricket matches, yet these were grist to the mills ofnthe card makers.
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| Not Really What You Expect … |
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| … On A Christmas Card |
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nIt wasn’t long though until the familiar holly, snowmen,nKings, bells and all the other tat were rolled out and soon elaborate creationsnof lace, gilt, bells, silk, gold, silver, broche, embossing, scrolls, fans,npop-ups, velvet, scent and goodness knows what else began to appear.
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| Lace, Swans and Lambs – on a Christmas Card |
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| A Selection of Cards – 1911 |
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nThisndidn’t stop the killjoys and the puritans attempting to get in on the act, fornas early as 1871 there were complaints in the newspapers that ‘legitimatencorrespondence’ was being delayed by all this whimsical postal nonsense andnin 1873, The Times printed the first notice apologising for ‘notnsending Christmas cards this year’.
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| One of the Cards from the above catalogue – A Poodle riding a Pig. |
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nBy the 1890s, the custom of sendingncards was beginning to decline and might well have died out all together had itnnot been for the resurgence during the First World War, when cards to and fromnthe front became a welcome communication with loved ones. Christmas cards maynwell be in danger again as the habit of hand-written communication diminishesnin the face of the instant messages of the e-mail, text and other modern formsnof keeping in touch.
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| Christmas Card from King George VI – 1939 |
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