The holiday season is full of many traditions, one of which is sending Christmas cards.
Each year over 1.3 billion Christmas cards are sent in the United States alone, according to the Greeting Card Association.
However, this wasn’t always the case, the predecessor of the modern-day Christmas card was a Christmas postcard, and prior to that the Christmas letter.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Christmas postcards were invented in 1843 in England by a man named Henry Cole.
At the time, it was customary to hand-write Christmas letters, and impolite not to respond. Cole was a well-known educator and an advocate of the arts with a very large circle of family and friends.
Overwhelmed by the pile of letters received, each requiring hand-written response, he came up with an idea to reduce his workload: Small mechanically-printed postcards, each requiring only a simple note to convey Christmas greetings rather than a full letter.
Cole approached an artist friend named J.C. Horseley, and together they came up with a holiday theme design that consisted of a family gathered at a table celebrating the holiday, an image of people helping the poor, and a greeting of A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to You, with one additional line to personalize – essentially the first Christmas card.
Taking several decades to gain popularity, Christmas postcards became commonly used and even collectible by the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s.
A print shop in the Boston area is credited with creating the first ones in the United States in 1875. In 1915, a new postcard printing company in Kansas City was started by Joyce Hall.
Her two brothers soon joined, and they began printing postcards under the name The Hall Bros. Co., a decade later becoming Hallmark.
As the market demanded more space for hand-written greeting, Hallmark developed the modern-day Christmas card.
Christmas postcards were also popular in Clearfield County in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, as evidenced by the collection held at the Clearfield County Historical Society.
A fine example of which is the one pictured here: Sent to Master Richard Irwin of Clearfield by Santa himself on Dec. 19, 1921.
