Rathdrum Prairie News: Christmas card greetings still popular

U.S. Postal Service employees will deliver an estimated 20 billion letters, packages and cards to Americans between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.

According to the USPS, 2 billion of these deliveries will be Christmas cards. And despite the advent of e-mail and other electronic means of communication, Americans are expected to actually send more Christmas cards this year.

Christmas and New Year’s greetings have long been part of holiday tradition. The earliest greetings were handwritten and delivered in person. As postal services developed, later greetings were handwritten and sent by post. As early as 1822, the superintendent of mails in Washington, D.C., complained he had to hire 16 extra mailmen due to the exchange of cards by post, saying, “I don’t know what we’ll do if it keeps on.”

In 1843 Sir Henry Cole, a wealthy British businessman, realized he could not write a holiday greeting card to each of his many friends and professional acquaintances, so he commissioned John Callcott Horsley, a prominent narrative painter, to design a beautiful and impressive card he could send through the postal system. One thousand copies of Horsley’s card were produced, and the commercially printed Christmas card was born.

The recipients of the cards were delighted and the tradition of sending commercially designed Christmas greetings by mail caught on immediately. These 19th-century Christmas cards were usually beautifully designed, featuring such embellishments as fringes, tassels, mother-of-pearl inlay and satin backgrounds. They often were “trick” cards, having moving or hidden parts, and many were elaborately shaped. The designs reminded recipients of the approach of spring, often including flowers, fairies, or the sentimental images of children and animals.

The first American Christmas cards were produced in 1875 by Boston lithographer, Louis Prang. Prang’s cards were expensive, featuring beautifully detailed birds and flowers, often drawn by top artisans of the day; and beautifully colored through an innovative multicolor printing process he developed himself. Artists such as Frederick S. Church and Winslow Homer created the artwork; and verses were penned by such famous poets as Longfellow, Tennyson and William Cullen Bryant.

Prang’s beautiful, but high-priced, cards were replaced when Americans discovered the cheap penny Christmas postcards imported from Germany. These cards featured the more traditional Christmas images such as the Madonna and Child, a decorated tree, snow scenes, or even Santa Claus. These postcards remained popular from 1900 through 1920.

In 1910, J.C. Hall began selling similar postcards out of a shoebox at a YMCA in Kansas City, Mo. Today, his grandson produces millions of cards, including Christmas cards, from Kansas City where he is president and CEO of the company his grandfather started at age 18 – Hallmark Cards.

Simple cards with envelopes replaced those early postcards, and have changed little throughout the years. Although society’s changing tastes have added a few extra subjects like cartoon illustrations or sports-related cards, for the most part, nostalgic, sentimental and religious images have remained popular. For the past several years, reproductions of those earlier elaborate Victorian cards and homemade cards featuring ribbons, beads, feathers, buttons and glitter have also become popular.

Today, Christmas remains the No. 1 card-selling holiday of the year; and postal carriers’ sacks are already full of millions of Christmas cards featuring beautiful snow scenes, Christmas trees, glowing fireplaces and children playing with toys. They will deliver Nativity scenes, nature scenes, carolers singing in the snow and the ever-trendy Santa Claus cards. The beautifully written sentiments and carefully worded acknowledgements they contain will allow us to share the holiday spirit with those we care about.

And, what about those overloaded mailmen? Although the USPS is a little better prepared for the deluge of Christmas greetings each year than they were back in 1822, 2 billion extra cards will still give them a few headaches. As in past years, the USPS expects the busiest mailing day this year to be Dec. 19, with more than twice as many cards and letters being canceled as on an average day. They ask you to answer a call they have been giving for more than 100 years – “Please mail early.”