Have Dickens at 1843 Xmas card

THIS festive greeting is Britain’s first Christmas card and is to be sold 177 years after it was made.

The incredibly rare card was produced in December 1843, the same month Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published.

About 1,000 were on the first print run but this is one of only 21 surviving examples and is being sold at Christie’s for £8,000 on December 9.

It is signed by Henry Cole, a civil servant who paid his friend, artist John Calcott Horsley, to illustrate his idea to send a card to toast an absent friend or relative.

Mark Wiltshire, of Christies said: “For such a small and delicate thing, it’s amazing that it survived.”

The coloured panel shows three generations of the Cole family with the words “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You”.

Britain’s first Xmas card for sale at £8,000

GREETING The 1843 card