TRIVIA BITS … CHRISTMAS CARDS

TRIVIA BITS … CHRISTMAS CARDS

Is your home like mine? Every Christmas it is the last minute thing to send Christmas cards. It is also a time to spare a thought for the postie. Written notes and hand drawn pictures for along time had been exchanged at Christmas but never had cards been sent nor received. In the Eighteenth Century, children were made to copy out a carefully worded letter called “A Christmas Piece” in their very best copperplate writing. This “piece” wished their parents the compliments of the season. The neatness and care taken by the children was menat to show how they were progressing. Beautiful hand-illuminated textas had, for centuries, been prepared by monks to mark important religious events. Well-to-do ladies with time to spare might paint little designs of pictures with a seasonal theme in watercolours to give to their acquaintances. When the Penny Post started in 1840, it became easier for people to send greetings to their friends. Three years later, a well-to-do man about London town who was far to busy to write letters, asked an artist friend to design a card for him with a printed message which he could just sign. A thousand copies of the card were produced, and this is the very first recorded Christmas card. The man was Henry Cole, Director of London’s famous Victoria and Albert Museum. His card was designed by Ralph C Horsley and had three panels. The large central one showed merry makers giving a toast, the other two side panels depicts the hungry being feed and the poor being clothed. But it was not until the late 1860’s that the practice of sending Christmas cards became really widespread. By 1870, the Christmas card boom had begun. The half penny post was introduced for cards in unsealed envelopes, and the cards themselves had become cheaper because of new methods of colour printing. In fact, Christmas cards had become so successful that even in 1900 the post master general was having to warn everybody to post early for Christmas!