Religious themes and images have played a key role in Christmas cards since early on, and not just in the U.S. Since the first Christmas cards in the mid 19th century, and across the globe, religious greeting cards have featured angels, nativity scenes, Jesus and various other depictions commemorating the birth of Jesus.

Part of the diversity comes from the fact that different countries and cultures have different beliefs about the birth and different customs and traditions. Christmas is celebrated in different ways from country to country, as this site points out with a slew of rich examples:

“In Spain Navidad (Christmas) lasts nearly a month, beginning December 8th with the feast of the Immaculate Conception (the Virgin Mary is the patron saint of Spain) and ending January 6 with Epiphany. The season emphasizes religious rather than the secular traditions…”

“Italy, like Spain, emphasizes Nativity scenes and religious aspects of the season in its Christmas observances. People fast and pray prior to Christmas dinner. Epiphany is similarly the day for gifts, but the gifts are left by an elderly woman (La Befana) who had intended to help the wise men find the young Jesus — but had been busy cleaning. Children write letters to La Befana requesting toys..”

“In Russia “Babouschka” is the name of the elderly woman who failed to provide food & shelter to the Wise Men. She wanders searching for the Christ child, leaving gifts for children. Christmas dinner is a meatless meal eaten on January 6th (Christmas by the Julian calendar) following a period of fasting. In Ukraine the meatless Christmas dinner is served in twelve courses to honor the 12 apostles….”

People in the British West Indies have a Christmas celebration called Jonkonna, which is a combination of English mumming and African traditions. The festival involves elaborate costumes, music, dancing and mumming…”

The examples go on and on (see Wikipedia for more).

All of this created a rich array of religious cards from around the globe, each with its own personality. Below are examples of Polish Christmas cards, which I came across on Flickr, part of an amazing collection on this site

More recently, cards with the classic religious messages and images (like those below)) have been losing their popularity in many countries. This story from the UK based Daily Mail newspaper claims that in 2006, less than 1 percent of the cards sold in stores it surveyed were religious in nature. They’ve been replaced by cards with more modern religious and non-religious images.

1) It’s more personal. Getting a personal letter always feels more personal than something you receive over the Internet. Part of this is psychological, part may be kinesthetic–you get to feel the card. I compare this to reading a real book vs reading something online. I don’t mind getting my news and daily information online (I read 30 to 40 news feeds a day) but if I want to read something deeper, something that takes time and thought, I’ll read a real book. There’s something gratifying about opening a letter and sitting down and reading it away from the office, computer and your work life.

2) It’s more emotional: I still have boxes of cards and letters my dad sent to his mom, brothers, and my mother from the 1950s and early 60s. He’s long gone but the cards and letters remain. I enjoy seeing how he expressed himself, and his style of writing. He wasn’t a Hemingway–not even college educated–but he got his point across in his own way, and often emotionally. When he was traveling the world on oil tankers, he’d write back about how he “missed home.”

3) It has more impact: This is particularly true with personal photo cards where you can post your family, friends or even dog’s picture. Part of the problem with e-cards is that on one level, they just represent another email in the (overloaded) email box. Easy to scan, efficient, yes. But also easy to gloss over or delete. A real card can stay up on the fireplace mantle or bedroom dressers for days or weeks.

4) It’s more authentic: People pick cards that reflect their personality, taste and values. You can do this with e-cards, of course, but somehow it just doesn’t come across as authentically. Just going to the trouble of picking out a card and writing a few lines says the sender cares. This is even more true of people who go to the trouble of writing a longer letter or a sort of family newsletter, outlining family highlights of the year in the case of New Year cards.

5) It’s NOT about the Internet or computers. I’ve been watching and been involved in the growth of computers and the Internet since the 1980s. It’s a phenomenal development that has changed the way we work, live and play. Yet today we may be seeing some of a backlash, as people seek out more real experiences. Virtual worlds, social media sites, blogs and websites can’t replace real human connections and relationships. The greeting card represents a real connection between people that transcends the digital world.

One more related note: I do believe the need for human connection is fueling the social media movement, and explosive growth of sites like Facebook and MySpace. It’s the same sort of drive that keeps people sending greeting cards, and I’m confident that these two worlds and forms of communications will co-exist for many years.

While searching around, I came across this interesting response on a Yahoo Answers site. The question was, “Do you still write greeting cards and send them through snail mail.”

Happy Holidays!

It sounds good—our premier Christmas image created by an American marketing machine—but it’s not completely true.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the Santa image had been evolving for years. By the late 19^th century, Santa was still portrayed in many lights– as large and slight build, sometimes chubby, sometimes not; sometimes jolly, sometimes serious. His clothes might be red, purple or green (when Louis Prang created a Santa Claus Christmas card in 1885, he was wearing a red suit)

Still, there was a look emerging. By the time Norman Rockwell was painting Santas in the 1920s (picture below on left), Santa’s makeover was pretty complete and universally recognized. The bushy eyebrows, chubby physique, white beard, sacks of toys—all were in place by the time Coca Cola got its hands on Santa.

You could also see this Santa image depicted for years in Christmas cards (see above middle and right).

Chalk it up as an urban legend, as this site points out:

“Although some versions of the Santa Claus figure still had him attired in various colors of outfits past the beginning of the 20th century, the jolly, ruddy, sack-carrying Santa with a red suit and flowing white whiskers had become the standard image of Santa Claus by the 1920s, several years before Sundlom drew his first Santa illustration for Coca-Cola. As The New York Times reported on 27 November 1927:

A standardized Santa Claus appears to New York children. Height, weight, stature are almost exactly standardized, as are the red garments, the hood and the white whiskers. The pack full of toys, ruddy cheeks and nose, bushy eyebrows and a jolly, paunchy effect are also inevitable parts of the requisite make-up.”

In fact, according to Wikipedia, Coca-Cola was not even the first soft drink company to utilize the modern image Santa Claus in its advertising – White Rock Beverages used Santa in advertisements for its ginger ale in 1923 after first using him to sell mineral water in 1915.

What Coke did do was give us a consistent, standardized look, while promoting an image that would spread across the globe. While they didn’t invent the red-clothed Santa, their massive campaign was one of the main reasons for that Santa Claus is depicted even today as wearing red and white.

It was during the Great Depression, and Coke hired a talented Chicago illustrator (Haddon Sundblom) to create a Christmas advertising campaign. Times were tough and Coca-Cola needed ways to increase sales of their product during the usually slow winter season.

Sundblom enhanced Santa’s image, making him about two feet taller, 100 pounds heavier and featuring a new personality. This Santa would be good natured, jolly and a breath of fresh air for those suffering in tough times. Santa appeared in a gleaming red outfit. Sundblom’s version was a full-sized human (no more elf figures) with a plump belly and a pleasant face. One writer described him as a “kindly uncle who enjoys his work. He raids the refrigerator and takes time to play with the family dog.”

The “new Santa” became part of Coke’s annual advertisements, which featured him drinking Coke, giving Coke as a gift, and enjoying the drink in different ways. It worked. Coke’s sales surged during the winter, and the new perennial feature helped the burgeoning company expand its sales to children (to the dismay later of parents).

Sundblom’s annual painting from 1931 through 1964 evolved into the “traditional” Santa that many of us grew up with.

As far as the red and white colors being a Coca-Cola brand-driven conspiracy, remember that most of the depictions by the late 1800s had him in these colors. And turns out there is some historical basis for a red and white Santa. The colors go all the way back to Santa’s ancestors, particularly Saint Nicholas, Bishop of Myra (and Bari) (see post) Hundreds of years before anyone had even heard of a Coke, these people were typically clothed in the traditional red colored bishop robes. Coca Cola may have standardized and popularized the new Santa, but the color issue is a (excuse the pun) red herring.

More history and material on the commercialization of Santa on this site.

The forerunners of Santa go back hundreds of years. By the time he showed up on the first Christmas cards in the mid 1800s, his image was already partly shaped. Ancient images include the Christian Bishop of Myra (4^th century), known as Saint Nicholas. Bishop of Myra was famous for his kindness to children and generosity to the poor in Lycia, a province of the Byzantine Anatolia, now in Turkey.

Then there was the mythic Norse God Odin, in the 12^th century (pictured below, far left), the God of War. Odin, with his white beard, has an slight but eery resemblance to today’s Santa and apparently he was known for riding on his horse, bringing either gifts or punishments, as appropriate. He was both loved and feared since he was said to be able to read hiding thoughts.

There were various Santas, different traditions by country. As this site points out, St. Nicholas is said to arrive in Holland by boat from Spain, a more prosaic method of transport than the sleigh. But he only leaves gifts for good children and the naughty ones get left birch twigs by an ugly black dwarf.

The Finnish Santa was also a pagan figure, named Joulupukki and known for wearing goatskins and horns. But instead of giving presents, he demanded them in return for not causing trouble.

The British Father Christmas first appears as a minor pagan figure in the middle ages. Portrayed as a merry old man he was associated with feasting and drinking and the pagan festival of Yule. Disapproving of this pagan revelry in 1644, England’s puritans banned the celebration of Christmas calling it,”The Old Heathen’s Feasting Day”.

Other images appeared across Europe. In Germany, there was the Pelznickel or Belsnickle (“Furry Nicholas”) who visited naughty children in their sleep. The name originated from the fact that the person appeared to be a huge beast since he was covered from head to toe in furs.

It was actually Dutch emigrants had taken the story of a legendary gift-bringer called ‘Sinterklaas’ to America, where he eventually became known as “Santa Claus.”

Eventually, a new figure of Father Christmas emerged, representing a spirit of benevolence and good cheer in medieval England.By the 19th century, he was evolving to more of the European Saint Nicholas.

By the mid to late 1800s, of course, Santa was appearing in Christmas cards. But the image varied greatly, as artists influenced the image.

One Santa “look” came from the early 1820s, when a New Yorker, Clement Clarke Moore, wrote and published a poem a year later: “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” Today it would be known by its opening line, “‘Twas the night before Christmas . . .”).

This may have been the beginning of the American version of Santa. There were the eight reindeer (all named) and Santa’s new trick of coming down the chimney. However, Moore’s Santa was still sort of shrimpy by today’s standard, a “little old driver” with a tiny sleigh.

Out of all of this began emerging a modern Santa Clause, a blend of Moore’s elf-like version and the jolly “Kriss Kringle” amalgam of the European Santas. Thomas Nast picked up the ball in 1860, influenced by Moore’s poem. Nast was the cartoonist who created the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey. When he was just 21-years-old, Nast gave Santa his familiar shape: fat and jolly, with a stocking cap and a long white beard

Nast was the first to dress St. Nick in a red suit trimmed with white fur, and later dreamed up the idea that St . Nick lived at the North Pole. By then Santa was showing up everywhere in Christmas cards. The images still varied, from the jolly old fellow we know today to a more serious character, thoughtful and almost scary looking (at least to young children) (This may be a leftover from old times, when Santa Claus was often depicted as tall, thin and domineering – often with black hair and a stiff brimmed hat).

Coca-Cola Company would change all that in the 1930s, finalizing the Santa “look” we know today, creating a jollier, consistent and standardized image(More on this later)–all captured in Christmas cards along the way.

Yet much is still unknown about one of our most enduring traditions. Here are seven facts you didn’t know about Christmas–ok, maybe you knew one or two (If you knew more than that, call us and we can put you to work…helping write our blog

1) Christmas cards are an English innovation. They were originally penned by boys who were practicing their writing skills and they would present these handmade cards to their parents.

2) President Eisenhower issued the first official White House Christmas card in 1953. By the year 1961, the White House was sending out 2000 cards. By 2005, that number had risen to over 1.4 million.

3) For every 3 holiday cards purchased and sent, one has a religious message.

4) Christmas cards are the most popular of all the seasonal cards; no other card comes close. Some 30% of greeting card sales annually, can be attributed to the holiday season.They comprise 60% of the total sales. Second is Valentine’s Day, at 25%:

• Christmas 61%
• Valentine’s Day 25%
• Mother’s Day 4%
• Easter 3%
• Father’s Day 2.5%
• Other 4.5%
  
  

5) In the United States there is an estimated 3,000 publishers of greeting cards. These range from giants like Hallmark to smaller, specialized card makers like our TaDa Greeting Cards.

6)”Merry Christmas” is the greeting preferred by 53% of Americans 21% of people like “Happy Holidays” and only 12% like “Season’s Greetings”.

7) When considering which boxed cards to purchase, 56% of us consider the variety of cards offered while 63% base our decision on price (we’ve found through our customer surveys that 61% actually rate quality/style as their highest priority). These factors help explain why online distributors (offering variety, price and quality) are the fastest rising market segment.

The Christmas card was actually born amid the Victorian era, which started in the 1830s in England. Hard to believe, but before Queen Victoria’s reign started in 1837, few people in Britain knew anything about Santa Claus, Christmas cards or even a work holiday.

The wealth and technologies generated by the industrial revolution of the Victorian era transformed Christmas forever. The Victorian era was a time of great growth of the cities, expanding economies, education reform and the rise of a new middle class (the term was meant to describe those people below the aristocracy but above the workers). There was a political shift as the new middle class challenged aristocratic privilege and corruption. The new urban middle-class strove to establish a society based on merit rather than on one’s birth. This may not seem like a big deal today but in the mid 1800s, it was almost revolutionary. New businesses and industry arose, and new business opportunities exploded.

This was ripe ground for the spread of the Christmas card. According to Victorian Christmas, “the Christmas card publishing industry

created unheard of opportunities for artists, writers, printers, and engravers. In 1880 the Christmas card had a new birth, for it was then that a great London firm offered five hundred guineas in prizes for the most artistic designs. Many of the great artists of the day responded with their best ideas..”

Writers, too, got in on the act. “…Many well-known writers were not above this profitable work of creating greeting cards. Thousands of pounds were spent in finding the right poems and suitable Christmas sentiments, until at last these Yuletide offerings reached the climax of their literary and artistic excellence.”

The result was a rich array of cards with a wide range of themes (nature was a big one; also, dolls and little girls, courting couples, feasts, animals, flowers, and winter scenes) The cards came in different sizes, shapes and colors. The Amazing Facts website points out that, Victorian Christmas Cards, “were considerably more elaborate than today’s, often adorned with layers of lace, silk fringes, tassels, ribbons, dried flowers, satin, or mother of pearl. Some were glass frosted. One surviving Victorian card consisted of 750 pieces of material stitched together.”The new style was secular, with an occasional angel thrown in for a bit of religious spice. In a sense, many cards were actually collages, for a drawing of a girl, for instance, a piece of satin might serve as a dress. Sometimes the writers got carried away with their prose. Example: “When snow lies at Christmas and Grandpa shivers-the children are bright; they look forward to feeding the chickens in spring.” (Amazing Facts)

In 1843, Sir Henry Cole commissioned John Collcott Horsley, a fashionable artist of the time, to design the first Christmas card. Horsley, along with his artwork, was known for his leadership of a campaign against the use of nude models by artists-work. This effort earned him the nickname “Clothes-Horsley”

Horsley (pictured here) born in London in 1817, also designed the Horsley envelope, a pre-paid envelope that was the precursor to the postage stamp. Later in life, in 1882 was elected treasurer, a post which he held till 1897, when he resigned and became a “retired Academician.”

It apparently took three years before the Christmas card custom caught on; then the English Parliament passed the Postage Act,making it possible to send letters for a penny. Popularity had boomed within a decade across England. Of the 1,000 original Christmas cards printed, only 12 are known to still exist, two of which are in the Hallmark Historical Collection.

Prang was born in Breslau in then Prussian Silesia. His father Jonas Louis Prang was a textile manufacturer and of French Huguenot origin. According to Wikipedia, because of health problems as a boy, Prang was unable to receive much standard schooling and became an apprentice to his father, learning engraving and calico dyeing and printing.

In the early 1840s, Prang traveled around Bohemia working in printing and textiles. He eventually became involved in revolutionary activities in 1848 and was pursued by the Prussian government. He eventually emigrated to the United States and Boston, Massachusetts.

In the 1850s Prang’s firm specialized in prints of buildings and towns in Massachusetts. After buying his partner out, he eventually began work in colored printing of advertising and other forms of business materials.His firm became well known for war maps, printed during the American Civil War and distributed by newspapers.

In the 1860s he continued to prosper, creating high quality reproductions of major art works and popular album cards, showing natural scenes and patriotic symbols. Then in Christmas 1873, Prang began creating greeting cards for English markets and the next year, he began selling his first Christmas cards in America. Amazingly, Americans had to import greeting cards from England for three decades. His initial creations featured flowers and birds, unrelated to the Christmas scene. By 1881, Prang was producing more than five million Christmas cards each year. His Yuletide greetings began to feature snow scenes, fir trees, glowing fireplaces and children playing with toys. His painstaking craftsmanship and lithographic printing have made his cards a favorite of collectors today, while earning him the title of the “father of the American Christmas card (Pics of his original factory and home in Boston)

But to understand the Christmas card, you have to go back a long way. People have been using “cards” to express their feelings and thoughts for centuries.

There were the early Egyptians, who used papyrus scrolls to express their greetings. Greeting cards are also associated with the ancient Chinese, and as early as 1400, the Germans were printing their New Year’s greetings.

The Christmas card didn’t come along until the 1840s. Amazingly, as late as 1800 there was little celebration around Christmas. According to Digital History, “Christmas was not centered around the family or children or giving presents. There were no Christmas trees with ornaments and lights; there were no Christmas cards; and there was no kissing beneath the mistletoe. Nor were there Christmas carols. Most amazingly of all, no Santa Claus or Kris Kringle or St. Nicholas…”

For decades, Christmas in many cities had been a battle ground between conservative forces going back to the Puritans who wanted to keep any celebrations toned down and others who used it as an excuse to get drunk and raise hell. There were movements led by evangelical Protestants calling for a “shorter, more refined, more family-centered celebration at the end of the year.”

All of this paved the way for the Christmas card. The first commercial Christmas cards were actually commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London, 1843, and featured an illustration by John Callcott Horsley.

Horsley created the picture on the card (a family hugging and raising their glasses in a toast). According to Wikipedia, the picture was controversial. In the center is a picture of a merry family party, including three generations, grandparents to grandchildren, drinking wine. The figures represented two of the acts of charity, “feeding the hungry” and “clothing the naked.” But some said it condoned drunkenness.

Indeed, initial reaction to the new Christmas crds was widely negative. Besides those who accused Horsley of encouraging intemperance and alcoholism, others said the cards were just a foolish extravagance. Truth is, many Protestant sects refused to condone the Christmas Card for many years.Still, the idea was shrewd—and soon caught on.

(BTW, this wasn’t Cole’s first such activity. He’d helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. A batch of 1000 cards was printed and sold for a shilling each…”

Initially, cards were generally not mailed or signed, but delivered by messenger with a calling card. This began to change with the penny post, introduced in England in 1840, which helped popularize Yuletide greetings by mail.
By the 1850s, cards were appearing on the European continent.

The first commercial Christmas cards was mailed out in the U.S in 1875., thanks to a German immigrant (Louis Prang) who opened a small lithographic shop near Boston. By the 1890s, he was churning out 5 million cards a year. It was the birth of what would be a a major industry.

The Christmas card has survived depressions, world wars, plagues and everything else man can throw at it—and it’s still growing.

Trends came and went. Early English cards favored flowers, fairies and other fanciful designs that reminded the recipient of the approach of spring. Humorous and sentimental images of children and animals were popular, as were increasingly elaborate shapes, decorations and materials. There were Victorian styles cards, religious and winter themes.

By last year, Americans were sending out nearly 2 billion cards a year (The second largest is Valentine’s Day, with approximately 192 million cards mailed)—and that was just the U.S. Billions more flow from around the world. Even in the Internet Age, people keep sending cards.

This blog will explore the life of the Christmas card, and all its beauty. We’ll look at the most intriguing cards, trends in cards, the psychology behind cards, and much more. We call it the Secret Life of the Christmas card because, in a sense, it has led an interesting life–and brought so much joy to so many people. By any account, it has been an interesting journey and tale. We’ll do our best to capture this as we go forward.

For more information on us, and to see how far the Christmas card has come, you can check out our Tada Greeting Card website.