A Bit of Christmas Magic

We received this card from some very old and dear friends who are spending Christmas at their place in Florida.  It made me think of them and of the real magic of Christmas - the joy and friendship we have shared with so many people in so many places in the past 35 years.

24 December - 563: The Byzantine church Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is dedicated for the second time after being destroyed by earthquakes.

Christmas Card - II

Though of a slightly later period this lovely
floral card is reminiscent of the early Christmas
Cards created by Louis Prang 

The United States Postal Service had been created back in 1775 with Benjamin Franklin as its first Postmaster General.  By the early 1800s the USPS relied on a system of horse, coach and steamboat delivery to carry an every increasing volume of correspondence as the country expanded.

And at no time of the year was that volume as critical as it was as the Christmas season approached.   People sent handmade greetings to family and friends spread out throughout the continent and often with the increase of immigration, overseas.  The workload was so bad in 1822 that the Superintendent of Post in Washington D.C. complained that he would have to hire 16 additional postmen.  Fearful of future bottlenecks in delivery he petitioned Congress to restrict the exchange of cards by post at Christmas time.  He issued the dire warning that the Service would grind to a halt if this sort of thing kept up.

The centre pane of this post card shows a traditional German Christmas that was soon to become the idea of how Christmas was celebrated throughout much of the English-Speaking World.  The border  seems to have a strange "bringing civilization" flavour to it.

As well as celebrating Christmas these stylish
Fraulein are modelling the latest fashions for the young set
in Wein in 1888.  Perhaps this card was designed for
a dressmaker or fashion shop - even then businesses sent out
Holiday Greetings to their patrons.

Poor man - it was of course only the beginning.  Once ready-made Christmas greetings became the rage the flood of cards was to become beyond the poor Superintendent's wildest imaginings.   Though  ready-made cards had been introduced in England in 1843 they didn't become fashionable in North America until 1875 when German-born lithographer Louis Prang introduced them at his shop in Boston.  His first Christmas cards were mostly floral bouquets and except for the odd possible bit of "language of flowers" that was popular in Victorian times had little to do with the season.  As time went on  what is considered now to be traditional Christmas themes began to appear.  He could be thought of as  the "father of the American Christmas card".  However by 1890 his cards fell out of favour and were being replaced by the cheaper Christmas-themed penny post cards imported from his native Germany.


The post card - cheaper to make, buy and send - was replacing the elaborate - and expensive - Victorian card as a way of sending Christmas wishes to friends and family.  Reflecting the traditions of Yuletide as they were celebrated in Mittel-Europe and were being observed in a Great Britain emulating their Queen and her family.  And of course under the influence of the "Motherland" most of her colonies and former colonies followed the customs.  They were to become the template of how Christmas was to be observed for much of the English speaking world.

With the coming of the Great War all things Germany were banished and though post cards continued to be sent they had a patriotic theme - on both sides of the barbed wire.  By the end of the war post cards were starting to fade from the scene and the older style cards with envelopes returned to favour.

That poor overwhelmed Superintendent would have thrown his hands up in despair at the millions of cards that flooded through the postal system a mere century after his dire prediction. 


14 dicembre/December - San Giovanni della Croce

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• Prang of Boston (streetsofsalem.com)

Christmas Cards - I

Over the past five years I may have mentioned that one of my favourite authors is E.F. Benson and chief amongst his books the series that traces the "alarmes and skirmishes" between those two forces of nature Elizabeth Mapp and Lucia. I was drawn to his books by the BBC TV Series that brought to life the citizens of Tilling in the persons of Geraldine McEwan, Prunella Scales and Nigel Hawthorne.  Though it is over 30 years old since they first appeared they are still a constant source of joy and gentle laughter.

As indeed are the Lucia novels that I have read, read again and reread a third, fourth and possibly fifth time.  Though there may be great things going on in the outside world but to the residents of Tilling they are as nothing compared to the daily thrill of life in their own little, fast fading, world.  Even the sending of Christmas cards became a matter of thrust and parry and tactical manoeuvrings.

The pleasant custom of sending Christmas cards prevailed in Tilling and most of the world met in the stationer's shop on Christmas Eve, selecting suitable salutations from the threepenny, the sixpenny and the shilling trays.  Elizabeth came in rather early and had almost completed her purchases when some of her friends arrived, and she hung about looking at the backs of volumes in the lending library, but keeping an eye on what they purchased.  Diva, she observed selected nothing from the shilling tray anymore than she had herself; in fact, she thought that Diva's purchases this year were made entirely from the threepenny tray.  Susan, on the other hand, ignored the threepenny tray and hovered between the sixpennies and the shillings, and expressed an odiously opulent regret that there were not some "choicer" cards to be obtained.  The Padre and Mrs Bartlett were certainly exclusively threepenny, but that was always the case.  However, they, like everybody else, studied the other trays, so that the next morning when they all received seasonable coloured greetings from their friends, a person must have a shocking memory if he did not know what had been the precise cost of all that were sent him. 

But where did the "pleasant custom of sending Christmas cards" originated?

The custom of exchanging greetings at Christmastide was an age old one and often took the form of handmade cards delivered by hand within a town and then as postal systems grew spread to family and acquaintances further afield.   In England at least, it appears that the first commercial Christmas card was created in 1843. Henry Cole (left in a caricature from Vanity Fair from August 1871), as well as being a civil servant, was the chief architect of the newly modernized British postal system, a moving force behind the Albert Hall, Great Exhibition of 1851 and promoted and oversaw the building of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Needless to say he was a busy man and in 1843 felt he was too occupied to write out the personal greetings that friends expected to receive at Chistmas time  so he hired John Calcott Horsley to design a "greeting card" all ready to be sent. Horsley's design was hand-coloured and lithographed on stiff, dark cardboard and bore the greeting: A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you".

It featured adults and children at a Christmas feast raising a glass in a toast but also bore several readily recognizable Christian symbols: sprigs of holly for chastity and ivy symbolizing the footprints that God had left as he walked upon the earth.  And despite the festive atmosphere in the centre pane the receiver was reminded and encouraged to feed and cloth the poor at this time of year as an act of Christian charity.

The card proved popular  and 1000 were printed and sold in London stationery shops for a shilling each.  Of that original printing only two or three are known to exist today and at the most recent auction one that Cole sent to his grandmother went for £22,500 ($35,500.00).  A good deal of the popularity of the card stemmed from the ease of dispatching greetings to family and friends using Cole's newly introduced penny post.  Some controversy arose when several Temperance societies complained about the tipples being enjoyed by the merry throng, particularly the little girl who is being given a sip to celebrate the Feast - however like all "bad" publicity it may well have bolstered sales.

And though we may find it odd that our friends in Tilling were buying Christmas cards to send on Christmas Eve until the Second World War there was Christmas morning postal delivery in most English towns. Canada had no such luxury however we did have the distinction of issuing the first Christmas stamp in 1898.  Though without a Christmas theme - rather it glorifies a rather more temporal Kingdom -  the stamp bears the inscription Xmas 1898.  Legend says that when the Canadian Postmaster General William Murdock proposed a stamp to honour the "Prince" meaning the Prince of Wales,  a raised eyebrow and a pointed question from Queen Victoria - who it is said never quite approved of her son - as to "which Prince" brought the quick-witted reply:  Why the Prince of Peace, m'am.

It had been thought that the e-card would put a dent in the Christmas card market however last year in Great Britain alone - where Christmas cards began - £171.6 was spent on single Christmas cards.  Neither Cole nor Horsley could have dreamt that those 1000 cards would lead to the avalanche of greetings that are exchanged around the world at Christmastide.

06 decembre/December - San Nicola

Merry Christmas - Joyeux Noel - Buono Natale

25 decembre - Nativita del Signore