Christmas Card Day

What the day is

Christmas Card Day is observed on December 9. It honors Sir Henry Cole, who commissioned the first commercial Christmas card in London in 1843.

Origin and background

Cole asked the artist John Callcott Horsley to design a card he could send to acquaintances, reportedly because he had more correspondence than he could answer individually. Around a thousand were printed and sold for a shilling each, which was not cheap. The design showed a family at table alongside scenes of charity, and it drew some criticism at the time for depicting a child being given wine.

The more important part of the story is what made it possible. Cole was closely involved in the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840, which replaced a complicated and expensive system, charged by distance and usually paid by the recipient, with a flat prepaid rate. Cheap, prepaid, sender-paid postage is what turned sending greetings to many people at once from an extravagance into an ordinary act. The card was an idea waiting on an infrastructure.

Adoption followed the printing costs down. Color lithography became cheap enough in the 1870s and 1880s to put elaborate cards within reach of most households, and in the United States the printer Louis Prang built the industry from Boston in the same period.

Volumes have fallen since, for the obvious reasons of cost and time, though less completely than predicted. What survives is the category of relationship where the physical object still carries the message: distant relatives, old friends, and people you would otherwise never write to at all.

How to take part

• Start today. The main reason cards do not get sent is that they get started too late.
• Write an actual sentence inside rather than only signing your name.
• Prune the list honestly, then write properly to the people who remain on it.
• Check the last posting dates for anything going overseas.
• Send one to somebody who will receive very little post this month.