The commercial-grade Christmas card as we know it rise in London in 1843 . That winter , Sir Henry Cole , a civil handmaid who helped organize the Great Exhibition and develop the Victoria and Albert Museum , decided he was too busy to write individual Christmas greeting to his family , friends and business colleagues . He asked his friend , the panther John Callcott Horsley , to design a card with an figure and brief greeting that he could mail instead .
Horsley designed a triptych , with the two side panel depicting in force works ( garb the nude and feed the hungry ) and the center jury showing a family Christmas party . The inclusion of hard drink at this party got Cole and Horsley an earful from the British Temperance Movement . At the bottom of the center panel was the inscription"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You . "
The batting order was lithograph on 5 1/8" X 3 1/4" stiff composition board in dreary sepia and then colored by hand . An variant of 1,000 cards was printed and sell at Felix Summerly ’s Treasure House in London for a shilling each . Of those cards , twelve be today in private collections , including the one Cole sent to his nanna .
Sending Cards Across the Pond
While Prang was presently producing more than 5 million Christmas card each year and had been knight the " father of the American Christmas card,“ his success did n’t last long . ( At leave alone is an example of Prang ’s employment . ) The initial popularity of his cards led to imitations that were less expensive and feature seasonal double instead of the colored floral arranging Prang favor . Prang ’s imitators ride him out of the market in 1890 , and inexpensive Christmas postcards imported from Germany ruled until World War I.
By the death of the war , the forward-looking American greeting card diligence had been born and today it supplies the 2,000,000,000 + Christmas placard that are sent every class .
observe : This clause originally appeared in 2008 .
