A Victorian Tradition
Sending and receiving Christmas cards is part and parcel of the festive season today. Gregory Holyoake reveals how it all began . . .
The birth of the Christmas card by Gregory Holyoake
NO era in history has influenced the way we celebrate Christmas as much as the Victorian. During this time Christmas stockings grew popular, turkey was the centrepiece of the Christmas feast and gift-giving became widespread, thanks in part to mass production of games and toys.
In 1848, Tom Smith, a British confectioner, introduced the Christmas cracker – a package filled with sweets that snapped when pulled apart. That year, the Illustrated London News published a drawing of the royal family gathered around a Christmas tree, which led to the German custom becoming popular in Britain. Key concepts associated with the season, such as its focus on children and charity, were also established – one reason being the publication of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol with its themes of family and good deeds.
Christmas cards also made their first appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and early examples conjure up colourful images of times past. These Victorian cards present depictions of stagecoaches hurtling through the snow, servants decking halls with holly, children playing parlour games before a roaring log fire and families decorating Christmas trees with candles and baubles.
It was the artist, John Callcott Horsley, and the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Sir Henry Cole, who came up with the idea of the Christmas card. The introduction of the Uniform Penny Post in 1840 had made sending letters more affordable. This had encouraged the sending of seasonal greetings on decorated letterheads and, with mail mounting, Cole thought up a timesaving, more aesthetic solution. He asked his friend, Horsley, to design a pictorial greeting in 1843.
The design Horsley came up with comprised three panels. Two depicted Christian charity to the poor and hungry and the central panel had the Cole family toasting the health of the recipient of the card. Horsley personalised his sample card to Cole by drawing a self-portrait in the bottom right corner instead of his signature, along with the date.
The cards were not immediately a commercial success. In 1846, Cole had 1,000 copies of Horsley’s design printed and they were offered for sale by a bookseller in Old Bond Street priced at one shilling each. This was expensive and they didn’t sell well.
It wasn’t until the 1860s that sending cards at Christmas became popular, because the Royal family had adopted the practice. The cards had also become more affordable and varied in their designs thanks to developments in printing processes and techniques such as die-cutting, which led to more elaborately shaped cards. In 1862 Goodall and Son, playing-card manufacturers in Camden Town, were one of the first companies to create cheap, attractive Christmas cards that appealed to the general public.
By 1870 Christmas cards were firmly established. Early designs were simple and elegant but became more elaborate and reached a peak of pictorial beauty and artistic quality by the 1880s. Children stuck them into scrapbooks while young lovers pasted them on to folding screens.
Novelty cards were also treasured by the Victorians. Often handmade, they opened to present bouquets of pressed paper flowers surrounded by ribbons, feathers, silver foil and paper lace. Wheel cards turned to reveal a series of paintings in side panels and pop-up cards portrayed theatrical performances.
The trend grew fastest in middleclass families. Mothers loved the sentimental illustrations of children by Kate Greenaway, while fathers received cards painted by military artist Harry Payne. Christmas trees featured, laden with toys such as Noah’s Arks, dolls, kites, drums, trumpets, skittles, toy trains and model soldiers. Nursery rhyme and pantomime characters were also a common theme; Red Riding Hood frequently appeared lost in the snow yet cheerfully listening to a robin singing.
Winter scenes of robins, holly, evergreens and mistletoe were also all popular designs and it was thus in the Victorian era that today’s familiar iconography of Christmas was established. Surprisingly, religious cards were not favoured. They may have been deemed too sacred to be relegated to the penny post.
Unusually, some cards depicted a reminder of summer days spent at the seaside and were adorned with starfish, shells, oysters and seaweed.
The establishment of London’s Natural History Museum in 1881 had inspired the public to take more interest in nature and the museum sentimentalised specimens and animals on cards for display.
The Halfpenny Post, introduced in 1894, boosted sales, and cards evolved throughout the 20th century owing to changing tastes and further developments in printing techniques. The cheaper postcard format was most popular and Art Nouveau designers introduced delightful stylistic depictions of butterflies and dragonflies.
Most poignant are the Christmas cards sent from British soldiers serving in France during World War I. They were hand-embroidered silk postcards with designs that were both sentimental and patriotic. Often there was a pocket containing a tiny card with a greeting: “To my dear mother.” One in particular, sent from “somewhere in France”, holds this pencilled message: “Dear mum and dad, Just a card to wish you all a Happy Xmas and a Bright and Prosperous New Year. From your ever loving Sonny Boy, Frank.” Did his parents ever see him again, one wonders.
World War I saw the rise of the Suffrage Movement and Christmas cards promoting this can be recognised by their colours: purple, white and green. Strident women don armour, wave flags and blow bugles. In one, Santa hesitates to distribute his presents to girls while menfolk deny them access to a Christmas tree where presents are exclusively for boys.
Today, despite competition from text messages and ecards, plus the rising cost of postage, happily Christmas cards remain popular. What started off as a pragmatic gesture by Cole and Horsley has grown into a multi-million-pound retail phenomenon, with around a billion Christmas cards bought in the UK each year. In 2013, one of Cole’s first cards sold for £22,000.
Somewhat more affordable are those made by Ling’s, one of the oldest established card manufacturers, based at Bath, who offer an artistic range – from single cards to boxed sets – calculated to appeal to a wide audience at home and abroad. Sales of their charity cards assist numerous worthwhile causes varying from Children with Cancer to Dementia UK. Additionally, their team of artists offer contemporary designs in an attempt to engage a younger audience.
Long may the tradition continue.