The First Christmas Card

In the early 19th century it was common for schoolboys to showcase their penmanship skills by producing elegant decorative notepaper for family use in writing friends and relatives during the holiday season. Perhaps an offshoot of this was the Valentine's card mania, which started in Britain in the 1820s and gradually spread to the U.S. and Canada.

It was not until 1843, however, that this notion of sending cards spread to Christmas. That year, Henry Cole (1808-82), English businessman and patron of the arts, enlisted the services of English artist John Horsley to produce 1000 Christmas-themed cards that he could give to his friends and business associates. The result was the portrait of a family enjoying a cup of punch, framed by depictions of charity: feeding and clothing the poor.

At a shilling each, a card such as this was too expensive for the average commoner; however, the 1850s saw the mass-production of Christmas cards accompanied by cheap postal rates, and so the practice of sending Christmas cards began in earnest. And it has persisted to this day.