Christmas Cards Facts

All you wanted to know about
Christmas cards in a nutshell...

Have you ever wondered who on Earth
started the whole Christmas cards things?
I do that every year... usually in December.

Well, thanks to Yannis Samatas, today's
Guest Writer, you don't have to wonder
anymore... In this informative and timely
article, he not only points the finger, but
he also tells us what those darn cards
say about us.

Hey, thanks to 'Forward-and-Share' and
Yannis, you will now be able to impress
your colleagues and friends at Christmas
parties... is that cool or what?

Enjoy...

Loup Dargent

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Christmas
Cards
Facts

Did you ever wonder who sent the first Christmas Card?
The first commercial Christmas card is believed to have
been designed and printed in London in 1843, the same
year Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol".
Previously, people had exchanged handwritten Christmas
greetings, first in person and later via post.

By 1822, homemade Christmas cards had become the
bane of the U.S. postal system. That year, the Superintendent
of Mails in Washington, D.C., complained of the need to hire
sixteen extra mailmen. Fearful of future bottlenecks, he
petitioned Congress to limit the exchange of cards by post,
concluding, "I don't know what we'll do if it keeps on."

In 1843, Sir Henry Cole, a wealthy British businessman,
wanted a card he could proudly send to friends and professional
acquaintances to wish them a "merry Christmas." He asked his
friend John Callcott Horsley to design it and Horsley produced a
triptych. Each of the two side panels depicted a good
deed-clothing the naked and feeding the hungry. The centerpiece
featured a party of adults and children, with plentiful food and
drink. Puritans immediately denounced the card, since it showed
people drinking in the family party. But with most people the
idea was a great success and the Christmas card quickly became
very popular.

Henry Cole (1808-1882), early english designer

Image via Wikipedia

The card's inscription read: "merry Christmas and a happy New
Year to you." "Merry" was then a spiritual word meaning
"blessed," as in "merry old England." A batch of 1,000 of the
cards were printed on a lithograph stone then hand-coloured by a
professional colourer named Mason. Of the original one thousand
cards, only twelve exist today in private collections. In
December 2005, one of these Christmas cards was sold for £8,469
at a Wiltshire auction.

Early English cards rarely showed winter or religious themes,
instead favoring flowers, fairies and other fanciful designs
that reminded the recipient of the approach of spring. Humorous
and sentimental images of children and animals were popular, as
were increasingly elaborate shapes, decorations and materials.

Printed Christmas cards soon became the rage in England; then
in Germany. But it required an additional thirty years for
Americans to take to the idea. In 1875, Boston lithographer
Louis Prang, a native of Germany, began publishing cards, and
earned the title "father of the American Christmas card."

Prang's high-quality cards were costly, and they initially
featured not such images as the Madonna and Child, a decorated
tree, or even Santa Claus, but colored floral arrangements of
roses, daisies, gardenias, geraniums, and apple blossoms.
Americans took to Christmas cards, but not to Prang's; he was
forced out of business in 1890. It was cheap penny Christmas
postcards imported from Germany that remained the vogue until
World War 1. By war's end, America's modern greeting card
industry had been born.

Today more than two billion Christmas cards are exchanged
annually, just within the United States. Christmas is the number
one card-selling holiday of the year. However, the estimated
number of Christmas cards received by American households
dropped from 29 in 1987 to 20 in 2004. Today, email and
telephones allow for more frequent contact and are easier for
generations raised without handwritten letters - especially
given the availability of websites offering free email Christmas
cards.

Facts
About
Christmas
Cards

Christmas cards were not the first greetings cards.
Since 1796, with improvements in printing, merchants
had been sending cards to their customers offering
"best wishes" for the new year.

In the nineteenth century, the British Post Office used to
deliver cards on Christmas morning.

The first Christmas stamp was released in Canada in 1898.

The average person in Britain sends 50 Christmas cards
each year.

Only one in 100 Christmas cards sold in Britain contains
any religious imagery or message, a Daily Mail survey
has revealed.

Image via Wikipedia

What do your
Christmas cards
reveal about
your personality?

Modern cards: Extroverted and enthusiastic about life,
although somewhat anxious and easily upset, with a
tendency to be more creative and unconventional
than most.

Humorous cards: Outgoing and emotionally secure,
but with a distinct lack of warmth and sympathy
for others.

Traditional cards: People who prefer reading
a good book to a night out on the town, with a tendency
to experience extremes of emotions, and follow the rules.

Abstract cards: Tendency to be disorganized and
spontaneous, highly strung, and a low need to surround
themselves with others

Cute cards: Sympathetic, calm and open to new
experiences, and with a tendency to prefer one's own
company to others.

Religious cards: Emotionally stable, sympathetic
to the needs of others, and well-organized.

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About The Author:
Yannis Samatas of greeceindex.com
is the author of this article.