From frogs stabbing each other, and insects dancing in the moonlight, to Krampus (a half-goat, half-daemon) entertaining the ladies, this photo collection shows creepy Victorian Christmas cards. As you can see, the cards were not only overwhelmingly secular, but some were grimly non-festive. During that time, Christmas was hardly celebrated, at least, not in a way we would recognize today. Many businesses didn’t consider it to be a holiday. Gift-giving had traditionally been a New Year activity but moved as Christmas became more important to the Victorians. By the end of the century, Christmas had become the biggest annual celebration in the Western world. One of the most significant seasonal traditions to emerge from the Victorian era is the Christmas card. The first commercially available card was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole and designed by John Callcott Horsley in London in 1843. The central picture showed three generations of a family raising a toast to the card’s recipient: on either side were scenes of charity, with food and clothing being given to the poor. Allegedly the image of the family drinking wine together proved controversial, but the idea was shrewd: Cole had helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. Two batches totaling 2,050 cards were printed and sold that year for a shilling each. Early British cards rarely showed winter or religious themes, instead favoring 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. At Christmas 1873, the lithograph firm Prang and Mayer began creating greeting cards for the popular market in Britain. The firm began selling the Christmas card in America in 1874, thus becoming the first printer to offer cards in America. Its owner, Louis Prang, is sometimes called the “father of the American Christmas card.” By the 1880s, Prang was producing over five million cards a year by using the chromolithography process of printmaking. However, the popularity of his cards led to cheap imitations that eventually drove him from the market. The advent of the postcard spelled the end for elaborate Victorian-style cards, but by the 1920s, cards with envelopes had returned. The extensive Laura Seddon Greeting Card Collection from the Manchester Metropolitan University gathers 32,000 Victorian and Edwardian greeting cards, printed by the major publishers of the day, including Britain’s first commercially produced Christmas card. The production of Christmas cards was, throughout the 20th century, a profitable business for many stationery manufacturers, with the design of cards continually evolving with changing tastes and printing techniques. The now widely recognized brand Hallmark Cards was established in 1913 by Joyce Hall with the help of brother Rollie Hall to market their self-produced Christmas cards.
(Photo credit: TuckDB Ephemera / Wikimedia Commons). Notify me of new posts by email.
Δ Subscribe
