Merry Christmas (Cards)

The advent of the Christmas card is one of those holiday traditions that can be traced to its origin ---  an English gentleman named Henry Cole who, in 1843, commissioned the equivalent of a post card, ordered a bunch and then mass-mailed to friends, family and acquaintances. The motive? He'd run out of time to answer Christmas letters, the most common form of long-distance holiday greeting at the time.

Louis Prang, a printer based near Boston, is credited with introducing Christmas cards to America in 1875. His initial offering would have looked something like the tiny (business card-sized) card at left, featured an image of flowers, and was designed to be slipped into an envelope and mailed or simply handed to a recipient. My great-grandmother, Chloe (Boswell) Prentiss/Brown, received this version --- most likely during the 1880s --- while living in the Marion County village of Columbia.

The Hall Brothers --- Joyce, Rollie and William --- are credited with introducing the "book," or larger folding card we're most familiar with now --- after 1915. Their company, now Hallmark, continues to generate millions of cards.

Postcard greetings, like the two larger cards here, were produced and mailed (or given) by the millions during the opening years of the 20th century. Many, including the elaborately embossed card below, were printed in Germany.

These two cards were given to a little girl named Julia Johnson, who lived in the small Winnebago County town of Thompson, where I lived for a number of years --- and were in turn given to me. Julia and her family were Norwegian, which explains the Scandinavian theme of the first.

Now, I'm sending them on (virtually) to you, so Merry Christmas!

Note that religious imagery really didn't become popular for greeting cards until after World War I.

I've been using an image of the Christmas Desk as the header for this blog during the holiday season. If you're interested in learning more about the desk and its contests, here's the link to a 2008 Lucas Countyan post explaining it.