Christmas Cards |

This year I am determined to get my Christmas cards sent before Christmas! (it helps to work for a company that creates and sells beautiful holiday boxed cards). But I was wondering how the tradition of sending Christmas cards began, so I turned to that master of all information – wikipedia. Here are some quickie tidbits of Christmas card history that I found interesting:

Christmas cards were first commercialized by Sir Henry Cole in 1843 London. His controversial card featured an illustration by John Callcott Horsley, which you can see here is an entire family celebrating the holidays by drinking wine (even the kids!). A little over 2,000 cards were printed and sold for a shilling each.

Queen Victoria issued the first “official” Christmas cards from the British royal family.

In 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first official White House Christmas card. Here you can see a rendering of President Johnson’s 1967 White House Christmas card.

Richard Nixon is the president who increased the mailing list of the White House Christmas cards to 40,000, and George W. Bush used to send out 1.5 million cards when he was president.

Throughout the 20th century, Christmas cards were produced by stationery manufacturers (including C. R. Gibson! see my post about our history), whose designs evolved over the years with patriotic themes, risque humor, nostalgia, religious images, and reproductions of Victorian designs.

Hallmark estimates that US households send approximately 1.5 billion holiday cards, which represents about 35% of the first-class mail volume delivered by the USPS annually.

Do you include an annual Christmas letter in your holiday cards, describing the families highlights from the past year? I haven’t done that in the past, but am inspired to give it a try this year as I always enjoy reading the letters I receive from those “type A” friends and family members that take the time to create them. I also like to include a photo of my boys, so everyone can ooh and aah at what handsome young men they are becoming!

If you need some inspiration to get started on that Christmas card list, stop here to see C. R. Gibson’s wide range of classic, craft, nostalgic, funny, and sparkly boxed holiday cards. And if you are one of those “type A’s” I was talking about, we even have handy Christmas card list books, where you can keep track of the Christmas cards you give and receive (talk about organization!)

Grab your pens and enjoy the season!