Oldest known Christmas card finds home in S.F.
1843 lithograph symbolizes start of holiday’s commercialization
John Crichton sent his Christmas card early by priority mail, boxed and bubblewrapped. He wanted to make sure it reached its destination, the Charles Dickens Museum in London, because it happens to be the oldest printed Christmas card known to exist.
Created and posted in London in 1843, the card had made its way to the Brick Row Book Shop in San Francisco, owned by Crichton, who has now returned it from whence it came. The lithograph, which is the size of a 3by5inch card on heavy stock, is on display in the exhibition “Beautiful Books: Dickens and the Business of Christmas,” through April 19 at the museum in the home of Dickens.
“The survival of these ephemeral items is a rarity, as evidenced by the fact that this museum wanted to display it,” Crichton says. “Having a Christmas card that you can sell is the beginning of the commercialization of Christmas.”
The thrust of the “Business of Christmas” exhibition is how the publication of “A Christmas Carol,” with its memorable opener, “Old Marley was as dead as a doornail,” marked the beginning of the seasonal gift book in Victorian England.
Dickens began the novella in October 1843 and completed it six weeks later. “A Christmas Carol” was published on Dec. 19, 1843, around the same time as the original Christmas card was printed.
Crichton normally keeps the card locked in a safe at his shop at 49 Geary Blvd., but at the Dickens Museum it will be in its own glass display case, prominently featured in the same gallery as an early draft and the first edition of “A Christmas Carol.”
“The card is one of the star objects in the show,” says Michael Barrett, press officer of the Dickens Museum.
There is no scientific way to establish that this item marked the beginning of the Christmas card, but nobody has found a card that can be proved to have been printed and mailed earlier than Christmas 1843. That is the year an enterprising Londoner named Henry Cole commissioned John Calcott Horsley to draw a lithograph of a family in seasonal merriment, with wine glasses raised.
The press run was 1,000, sold in shops at a shilling apiece, about $4 in today’s U.S. currency. Each card had a line at the top for writing in the name of the recipient, and a line at the bottom for the sender to sign. There was no printed date on the card, but at least one that survived was handsigned and dated by the artist “J.C. Horsley, 1843.” Christmas cheer envelopes were also available for mailing.
Then, as now, the cards were discarded (typically used for kindling in those days) at the end of the holiday season. Only five of the 1,000 are known to have survived, and three of them ended up in the possession Jock Elliott, a New York ad executive and collector of 3,000 pieces of Christmas memorabilia.
Elliott died in 2005, and parts of his collection were offered for auction through Sotheby’s. Two years ago, a Connecticut collector offered one of the lithographs for resale. It was purchased by Donald Heald, a wellknown New York antiquarian bookseller.
In January 2017, Crichton walked into Heald’s shop just to scout the competition. When he spotted the Christmas card, he bought it on the spot.
“I’m always looking for unusual things to have as part of my inventory, and this was very unusual,” Crichton says at his desk at the back of his shop, which is long and narrow with bookcases on both sides.
Crichton won’t say what he paid for the card, but the markup is 50% and the item is available for purchase for $25,000.
Crichton deals primarily in American and English literature from the 18th and 19th centuries, with an emphasis on Victorian writers Thackeray, Trollope, Hardy and Dickens. When a bibliophile comes in, he might mention his Victorian Christmas card, which has been temporarily taken off the market and shipped overseas, in the spirit of the season.
“I’m glad it is being appreciated by others,” says Crichton, who expects to have the card back in his safe by the end of April. “I could own it for years ... but one day the right person will come along.”