Matt Soniak
Who Sent the First Christmas Card?
by Matt Soniak - December 16, 2010 - 4:53 PM

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The commercial Christmas card as we know it originated in London in 1843. That winter, Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant who helped organize the Great Exhibition and develop the Victoria and Albert Museum, decided he was too busy to write individual Christmas greetings to his family, friends and business colleagues. He asked his friend, the painter John Callcott Horsley, to design a card with an image and brief greeting that he could mail instead.

Horsley designed a triptych, with the two side panels depicting good deeds (clothing the naked and feeding the hungry) and the center panel showing a family Christmas party. The inclusion of booze at this party got Cole and Horsley an earful from the British Temperance Movement. At the bottom of the center panel was the inscription “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.”

The card was lithographed on 5 1/8” X 3 1/4” stiff cardboard in dark sepia and then colored by hand. An edition of 1,000 cards was printed and sold at Felix Summerly’s Treasure House in London for a shilling each. Of those cards, twelve exist today in private collections, including the one Cole sent to his grandmother.

Sending Cards Across the Pond

prang.jpgMass-printed cards soon replaced hand-written greetings in most of Europe and the United States. Americans imported their Christmas cards from England until 1875, when a German immigrant named Louis Prang opened a lithographic shop and created the first line of Christmas cards in the states.

While Prang was soon producing more than 5 million Christmas cards each year and had been dubbed the “father of the American Christmas card,” his success didn’t last long. (At left is an example of Prang’s work.) The initial popularity of his cards led to imitations that were less expensive and featured seasonal images instead of the colorful floral arrangements Prang favored. Prang’s imitators drove him out of the market in 1890, and inexpensive Christmas postcards imported from Germany ruled until World War I.

By the end of the war, the modern American greeting card industry had been born and today it supplies the 2,000,000,000+ Christmas cards that are sent every year. The average American family sends 28 cards and receives the same number in return. One not-so-average family, the First Family, sends out over one million official White House Christmas cards each year.

Note: This article originally appeared last December. It will probably appear next December, too.

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Comments (11)

  1. I’m 26 years old now, and my mom has made her own Christmas cards every year since I was born. I don’t recall how many cards she made the first go-around, but we currently make 165 cards (150 for people we know and 15 for those people we have not yet added to our Christmas card list but feel they should get one anyway.

    A few years into making these Christmas cards, my mom started numbering each card, mostly as a way to make sure she got the full 150. It has become almost a tradition for our friends and family to compare numbers, and the lowest number traditionally gets bragging rights.

    We have no idea where this came from, as my mom does not pay attention to the number of the card, as far as who gets what card.

    Just thought I’d share a neat little Christmas card story :)

    posted by Jae Michels on 12-20-2009 at 1:43 pm

  2. The question is, who sent the first Christmas fruitcake? I’d gotten in in ’79, and passed it to my aunt, who later told me she gave it a woman she worked with. Haven’t heard anything about it since.

    posted by Joe Maz on 12-20-2009 at 7:38 pm

  3. I think I must be the only person in the whole country who actually LOVES fruitcake. This year I had to go out and buy one myself because nobody sent me one! I just don’t get what all the hate is about, really. Cake, fruit, nuts – what’s not to like?

    :(

    posted by Dorothy on 12-21-2009 at 6:56 pm

  4. In the words of Jim Gaffigan
    “Fruit good…cake GREAT!! Fruit cake…nasty crap!”

    posted by Knate on 12-16-2010 at 5:40 pm

  5. Dorothy: ME TOO! I actually broadcast to everyone starting around December 1st that if anyone gets the dreaded fruitcake they can just pass it my way. The best ones are the ones in the plastic bag that are so wet and dense it’s like eating a soggy gummy-bear-filled brick. MAN. I eat almost nothing but fruitcake from Christmas to Valentine’s Day. Probably why I expand so much in those months :)

    posted by Nicole on 12-16-2010 at 5:55 pm

  6. I have always believed that people that don’t like fruitcake just don’t serve it the right way. It’s best when it is cold and sliced super thin! And if you have never had a homemade fruitcake that has spent 2 weeks being constantly basted in whiskey, well friend, you are missing out!!!

    posted by Heather on 12-16-2010 at 5:56 pm

  7. If you had ever had a fruitcake from my great grandfather’s bakery, you all would be singing a different tune.

    posted by Sara P on 12-16-2010 at 7:26 pm

  8. It’s funny how an article regarding Christmas cards can get to fruitcake. So, here’s my two cents… :)

    It’s the bourbon. Must have alcohol! :) Seriously, it’s really good.

    posted by Kristin on 12-17-2010 at 9:23 am

  9. Kind of a weird question (not related to Fruitcake) – Is Louis Prang the founder of Prang crayons/art supplies???

    posted by PammyTheBear on 12-17-2010 at 11:11 am

  10. Yes, he is the founder of Prang’s crayons (I just googled him). His name rang a bell when I read the article – I used to live off of Louis Prang Ave in Boston.

    posted by Sam on 12-17-2010 at 11:26 am

  11. Great One Cole! Now I gotta go hunt down the AVH movie cause those spiders where too awesome. Can’t wait to watch it. I am sure I will have terrible dreams because of it.
    :oP

    posted by Mowens on 12-17-2010 at 6:19 pm

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