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Victorian Christmas Cards

With 2020 ending, I thought I would share a Victorian Christmas story with you. During this year, I came across this tale and thought it a bit dark. Little did I know how the year would unfold – with hindsight it is a perfect fit! This time around we will be looking at the world of bizarre and somewhat macabre Victorian Christmas cards – nothing like what we see today.

The first Christmas card was printed in 1843.

Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images

“In 1843, the same year that English author Charles Dickens created A Christmas Carol, prominent English educator and society member, Sir Henry Cole, commissioned the first Christmas card. Even with an impressive print run of 1,000 cards (of which 21 exist today), full-fledged manufacturing remained only a sideline to the more established trade in playing cards, notepaper and envelopes, needle-box and linen labels and valentines…” https://www.history.com/news/victorian-christmas-cards Cole did try to sell the cards at one shilling a piece and, while this first attempt was a failure, the idea did capture peoples’ imagination.

As we have seen the Victorian era was full of many new and unique innovations and customs. Queen Victoria and her husband, Albert, introduced the German custom of bringing a pine tree into the house for Christmas. Who could forget mummy unwrapping parties (as discussed in an earlier blog)? Advances in photography where families would pose with their newly deceased members for one last family picture. Aerial printing presses in hot air balloons (check this out in our earlier blogs, too). The list goes on. So, why not send pictures of dead birds to people to commemorate Christmas? Several factors came together to make this a reality and, as usual, printing was a key contributor.

Countries like the UK and America had standardised postal rates. In the UK it was possible to send post for one penny, and later in the 1870s half price holiday post rates made it cheaper than ever to keep in touch with friends and family during the holiday season – around the world.

Improvements to printing processes, faster presses, and alternative processes like lithography, would drive down the costs for producing cards to a few cents. Global migration to countries like America would mean there was a ready market for cards to sell to send Christmas wishes to family and friends. A BBC report estimated that by 1880 there were over 11.5 million cards produced.

“Victorian Christmas cards were a mixed bag of iconography, ranging from religious to everyday things. But one theme common in these seasonal greetings was humor, but not always of the kind we can appreciate today. A dead robin, a frog stabbing another, and Saint Nicholas stuffing a kid in a sack. The significance of these bizarre imagery is lost, but it is important to remember that the tradition of Christmas was still new, and its iconography had not fully developed.” – https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/creepy-victorian-christmas-cards/

So, what did the cards mean? “Social messages were often evoked, such as dead birds reminding people of the poor children dying in the winter streets. So, while they are profoundly, undeniably, bizarre to view now, even the creepiest of Victorian Christmas greetings likely had some contemporary meaning to the sender.” https://hyperallergic.com/261847/have-a-creepy-little-christmas-with-these-unsettling-victorian-cards/

One hundred and twenty years on, it is hard to imagine Christmas cards that do not have our now familiar themes on them. Advertising images created by Normal Rockwell, along with the mass card production through companies like Hallmark, have delivered a very sanitised image. In its own way these Victorian cards are a representation of a world long gone, but where chaos – even death – was accepted as part of everyday life. While perhaps not “enjoying” these cards, they do make an interesting statement on a different time of history. 2020 has been such a rocky year for many, it would be interesting if this type of reflective cards* was made today.

*We found these images over many sources on the internet, the links have been included below – some reference their sources, some do not. We in no way are intending to infringe on any existing copyrights.