S03 - E02 - Nov 25, 2019
Holiday Cards
Holidays!
- The final quarter of the year is chock full of holidays, from Halloween to New Year’s
- Holiday cards are a huge part of this - specifically Christmas cards
- Some are simple “thinking of yous” others are elaborate
- How did this tradition start?
- Why are the designs we use the ones we use?
Origins
- Article “Holly Leaf and Copper Plate” by Samuel Grafton from The North American Review Vol. 226, No. 6 (Dec., 1928)
- Cites Thomas Shorrock of Leith as the inventor
- Early 1840s
- Printed a laughing face with “A GUDE YEAR TO YE”
- Sir Henry Cole (goes on to become first director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum)
- Printed 1,000 engraved cards depicting a family eating in the middle and scenes of acts of charity on either side
- Doesn’t kick off Christmas card phase
- Reissued with “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” added
- Caused quite a scandal
- Temperance people saw the image as “vicious”; “might tempt the weak and sin-loving to indulge too freely in wine-bibbing.”
- Greeting cards take off
- A prevailing theory is that it grew due to the decline of the farm family and increase of families moving away from one another
- Louis Prang
- Father of the American Christmas card
- Lithographer and publisher
- his company was first to make commercially printed holiday greeting cards available to the public
- Early adopter of chromolithography
- Up until this point, things were printed in black and white and then colored
- Chromolithography printed colors
- 1875 - publishes first Christmas card for American market
- By 1881 - reportedly printing 5 million cards per year
- Between 1880-1884: held Christmas card design competitions with cash prizes
- Hallmark Cards established by Joyce and Rollie Hall to promote their card designs
- Catapulted to success with WWI and the want for cards to send troops
- Christmas cards keep growing in artistry and become even more entrenched in American Christmas tradition
- First cards with special art sold to support nonprofits (ie UNICEF)
- The Greeting Card Association remains optimistic that technology won’t ruin the card tradition any time soon
- Giving cards as a show of emotion is still ingrained in the American culture
Notable Designs
- devil-like horned creature who punishes badly-behaved children
- punishment usually took the form of kidnapping, often whisking naughty children away to hell
- popular in the early part of the 20th century
- the exchange of cards tradition happens on Krampusnacht, the night preceding the Feast of St Nicholas on December 6th
- Hallmark’s best selling card
- Released 1977
- Sold 34 million copies
- Most popular of all time
- 1962
- Post Office originally printed 350 million on sheets of 100 stamps
- Second printing were on sheets of 90
- Ended up distributing 1 billion copies of the stamp by the end of the year
References