Victoria Shilling
The Past Of December 25th Cardboards
The roots or history of Christmas cards is shrouded in controversy. One account is that in 1842, a 16-year-old boy named William Maw Egley engraved the first card. This card showed an illustration of Christmas dinner, skaters, dancers and also the poor receiving gifts. Inside, the content said “A Merry Christmas plus a Happy New Year for your requirements.” This card still exists today.
The first Christmas greeting is often credited to Sir Henry Cole, not William Egley, although Egley’s card was clearly around ahead of Cole’s. In 1843, Sir Henry Cole, the directory of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, commissioned Christmas cards which were illustrated by John Callcott Horsley, a popular artist at the time.
The illustration of this one-page stirred controversy because the scene depicted parents as well as a small child sipping glasses of wine, along with the hungry being fed along with the naked being clothed (although they were shown fully dressed). The content, printed at the banner designs within the center of the card, read “A Merry Christmas along with a Happy New Year for your requirements.” One thousand cards were issued by Summerby’s Home Treasury Office and were sold for starters shilling each. Only 12 of those original 1000 printed remain today.
Not everyone liked the thought of holiday cards. Some Protestant groups could not approve analysts till the 1900s. During Cole’s time, people complained the cards were too secular and the they would contribute to children developing poor morals, “alcoholism and intemperance.”
Overall, the general public loved the concept of sending cards at Christmas. At first, holiday cards were hand delivered which has a calling card. In the 1840s, Brits began mailing cards one to the other and from the early 1850s, the concept of sending holiday cards had spread to other countries at the European continent.
Unlike our modern holiday cards that feature religious or winter themes, early cards were wholly secular. They were more prone to show pictures of flowers, fairies and other springtime scenes. Over time, pictures of babies and animals were chosen. More a collage compared to a card, a minimum of within the modern way of thinking, these holiday cards were cut in elaborate shapes and made of increasingly ornate materials. One early card, still in existence today, is constructed of 750 individual parts of material sewn together. Other cards had silk, pearls, frosted glass, tassels, dried flowers along with ornate decorations attached.
The tradition of giving Christmas cards to family and friends did not cause it to be the particular pond to America for 17 years. In 1874, German immigrant and lithographer, Louis Prang printed the earliest American holiday playing cards. The fronts of his cards were decorated with flowers and birds, clone of the English spring-themed cards. Firstly, he shipped his cards to England because sending cards had not yet arrived at the States en masse. In 1875, Prang began selling his cards in America.
By 1881, Prang’s lithograph shop was producing over five million holiday cards 1 year. By for holidays, the fronts of your cards started to feature winter scenes, people around fireplaces and little ones with toys. Mr. Prang has been a stickler for quality craftsmanship. Today his cards are needed by collectors world wide. Unfortunately for Mr. Prang, other gamers imitated his style and made it possible to make cards more inexpensively, eventually causing him to go away from business.
Over the last 168 years, the Christmas card industry has steadily grown inside multi-billion dollar industry, selling over four million cards per year with American Greetings and Hallmark controlling 80% of your market. Today every tom dick and harry sends about 20 Christmas cards per year. The holiday card tradition is forever embedded in Western cultures.
Metal Detecting in Australia with Willo – Chapter 28 – Victoria Shilling at 1909 cricket oval