Vigo County Historical Society
Historical Treasure Article

Historic Treasure of the Week - November 30, 1986
By David M. Buchanan
Vigo County Historical Society

Greeting cards once expressed lasting meaning

With the coming holiday season, many people are visiting local stationery shops to choose from the array of Christmas cards. In so doing, we continue a tradition that dates back to ancient times.

Charms and tokens were exchanged when the season celebrated the winter solstice rather than the anniversary of the birth of Christ. Feasts, rites and other customs evolved to encourage the friendly gods and to placate the unfriendly gods. The exchange of charms and tokens was believed to bring good luck to the giver.

One of the first printed greetings, though done for New Year’s rather than Christmas, was engraved in 1466. It shows Jesus as a small boy standing on a flower with the cross behind him. A scroll floats at the rear with the engraved words, "Ein guot selig ior," meaning a good and happy year. The language is from lower Germany.

John Calcott Horsley generally is credited with designing the first Christmas card as we now know them. Sir Henry Cole, who had led the efforts for many reforms in Victorian England including that of the penny post, saw that printed messages could be sent through the mails at a very low cost. With that in mind, Cole asked Horsley to design that first Christmas card. Cole’s memoirs give the date of production as either 1845 or 1846.

By the 1880s Christmas card production was a big business, with each new card eagerly awaited by the public. The concept of Christmas cards was exported to America by British card makers, but the person who brought American Christmas cards to the forefront was a man named Louis Prang.

Prang emigrated to the United States in 1850 and began a number of short-lived business ventures including working as an engraver for Frank Leslie at Gleason’s Pictorial. In 1860 he formed L. Prang and Co. and set to work on a new lithographic color printing process. Success followed 10 years of hard work and his fame for the process (which sometimes involved up to 20 different color plates) was found on both sides of the Atlantic.

He began the first open competition for Christmas card designs in 1880 and his prizes to winning designers were very generous for the times. The first place prize was $1,000. Small prizes of $200 and $300 were awarded for other categories.

He also firmly believed in publicity and his exhibitions for these designs included judges like Richard M. Hunt, John LaFarge, Samuel Colman and Louis C. Tiffany.

As the demand for Christmas cards grew, various companies began to market novelty cards. No longer were the people satisfied with simple postcards; instead they chose from a variety of exotic cards.

Often, each card was chosen with a specific person in mind, much the same as families chose specific presents for different family members. And when the cards arrived they were critically received and compared with others. At the end of the Christmas season the cards usually were carefully preserved in albums as reminders of Christmas past.

Novelty cards, like this week’s historical treasure, began to be produced in the 1870s. They ranged in style from simple folding cards with funny sayings to cards that actually had a small recording that could be played with the season’s greetings. Cards were manufactured that, when tabs were pulled, would become a mass of colored paper flowers. Some cards that folded flat and opened into a three-dimensional stage always were popular. Some cards were functional, like those that were coin purses with the Christmas greeting printed on the silk lining.

This card has a pull-out stand cut into the back of the cardboard so it could be placed on a table or mantle. The card measures 6 inches by 7 inches. It probably was mailed in its own envelope.

Two rectangular blocks of padded silk are mounted on a matching border of silk fringe. The bottom block has a printed card saying, "Compliments of the Season," while the upper block has an oval inset into it. The oval features a lithograph of a farm house in winter. Small flects of mica have been glued to the landscape to create the illusion of glittering flakes of snow. Handpainted flowers decorate the silk border for the picture. No company trademark or name is printed on the card, nor is the name of the giver or the person who received it. Yet each took special care with the card. The giver in the construction and choice, the recipient in treasuring it.

This card is only one of many examples on display during the historical society’s annual Christmas at the Museum celebration.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday through Friday.