Christmas Greetings
Each year Ray and I look forward to receiving our annual Christmas card his English cousins send us from their home near Bristol, England. The cards are distinctly English in size, shape, and beauty. What was once an especially popular American tradition began in England.
The writing of Christmas and New Year’s letters was a popular custom in England in the 1840s. Custom required that the receiver answer every letter he received. In 1843 inventor, educator, and civil servant Sir Henry Cole fretted over his large pile of unanswered mail. He asked artist John Calcott Horsey to design a Christmas card for him to send instead. Cole wrote in his diary that Horsley brought him his design on December 17, 1843. In the center of the card, Horsey drew a color picture of Cole’s family celebrating Christmas around a table. Beside that scene were depictions of acts of charity. The card’s greeting read: “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to You.” Sir Cole hired a printer to print 1,000 copies, which were then colored by hand. In the card he sent to Horsey himself, Cole drew a small portrait of himself rather than signing his name.
English artist William Egley designed the second Christmas card in 1848. Egley’s card had several scenes, including people dancing, people sitting around a dinner table, and people performing acts of charity. The greeting was the same as Horsey’s and Cole’s.
By the 1860s, printing Christmas cards was a big business in England. The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, has a collection of 30,000 cards, about half of which are Christmas cards. This is appropriate since Sir Henry Cole was the museum’s founding director.
German immigrant Louis Prang, who was a lithographer in Boston, Massachusetts, is considered the first commercial Christmas card printer in the United States. By the 1880s, he was printing more than five million a year. As I mentioned yesterday, the New York Public Library has an extensive collection of Christmas cards, including this card published by Prang in 1887.
This Prang poster advertises its cards.
As we share Christmas greetings in person, electronically, or in the mail this year, we can remember that the amazing story of Jesus’ birth includes sweet stories of greetings. First, when Gabriel appeared to Mary:
Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” Luke 1:26
And later when Mary visited her relative Elizabeth who was carrying John the Baptist in her womb:
Now at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.” Luke 1:39-44
“And blessed is she who believed
that there would be a fulfillment of what
had been spoken to her by the Lord.”
Luke 1:45
Thank you for sharing the Light of the World with your children and for being the light of your home.
Prang Christmas cards in the New York Public Library collection
The people who were sitting in darkness
saw a great light,
and those who were sitting
in the land and shadow of death,
upon them a light dawned.
Matthew 4:16
Images courtesy of the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library.