The First Christmas Card

Millions of Christmas cards are now flooding through the letter boxes of Britain - and it's all thanks to a Bath businessman called Sir Henry Cole. Gerry Brooke investigates You'll find plenty of plaques and memorials around Bath to famous residents but where, you might ask, is the tribute to the man whose invention in early Victorian times is still part of every family's festive celebrations - the Christmas card?

The last 150 years have seen many claimants - but it now seems certain that the festive card was the idea of Sir Henry Cole, the son of a Dragoon Guards captain, born in Bath's Milsom Street in 1808. Sir Henry was a busy civil servant who helped set up the Public Records Office, London's Victoria and Albert museum and the Royal College of Music. He was also one of the organisers of the Great Exhibition of 1851, published illustrated children's books and won an award for designing a tea service. But his real claim to fame came when, in 1843, after forgetting to send his regular Christmas greetings to his friends and needing a quick means of communicating with them, he suggested to well-known artist and friend John Callcott Horsley that he produce a seasonal greetings card which could be mechanically printed.

Sir Henry's first hand-tinted cards - there were just 1,000 of them - were published commercially in 1846 and sold at a shilling each (five pence) through a children's magazine, Felix Summerley's Home Treasury.

In an attempt to settle the wrangle, Cole's publisher, Joseph Cundall, wrote to The Times in 1884 saying: 'The drawing (of the card) was made by J C Horsley RA; it was printed in lithography by Mr Jobbins of Warwick Court, Holborn, and coloured by hand. Many copies were sold, but possibly not more than 1,000. It was the usual size of a lady's card.' Horsley, by then an old man, agreed that he had been the designer of the first Christmas card, although he stressed that it was Sir Henry's idea.

And Sir Henry's daughter, Henrietta, revealed in 1903: 'I have in my possession one of these cards, coloured and sent to my father with the inscription 'Xmasse 1843'. Wishing to verify the date, I consulted my father's diaries and found the following entry - 17th November, 1843, Mr Horsley came and brought design for Christmas card.' So, that seems to settle it then - Sir Henry was undoubtedly the inventor of the modern Christmas card. The first designs, strangely enough, had little religious, or even festive, significance.

Flowers, fish, reptiles, animals, fairies and children were the usual subjects, with no signs of robins, holly and mistletoe, plum puddings, bells or even any of those obligatory snow-covered Dickensian-style stagecoaches. They weren't to appear for many years. Cole's card, printed on stiff cardboard and measuring five inches by three, was divided into three sections by rustic poles and vines. It showed a family party, full of bonhomie and good cheer, flanked by smaller pictures of the Victorian ideals of charity - the hungry being fed and the ragged being clothed. It carried the wording 'A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You' - the very same message that many card publishers still use today.

Space was left at the top to record the name of the recipient and at the bottom to record the name of the sender. A rare print of one of those first 1,000 cards - only 20 or so have survived into the 21st century - was sold at auction recently for more than £22,000 - not a bad price for something that originally cost five pence. However, the idea didn't really capture the nation's imagination until 1880, when a young entrepreneur called Adolf Tuck organised a nationwide competition - with 500 guineas going to the winner - for the best card designs.

Famous artists were commissioned to design cards along with words written by well-known poets. The immensely popular Victorian poet Lord Tennyson was once invited, but turned down, an invitation to write a dozen verses for which he would have been paid 1,000 guineas. But it was the introduction of the 1840's penny post, which meant that ordinary people could mail greetings to their friends easily and cheaply, and especially the 1870's halfpenny post - introduced for cards and unsealed envelopes - which meant that the custom of sending Christmas cards really took off. Small cheap cards, with an embossed border and with the simple greeting 'A Merry Christmas', could be bought for as little as one penny and proved very popular.

Robin designs proved popular around this time, it was said, because the postmen wore red uniforms. Advances in printing techniques soon helped to make cards more attractive as well as cheaper - and a growing railway network, soon covering the whole country, got them delivered much faster than the old stagecoaches. By the 1880s, more than 12 million cards, with a stamp value of £58,000, were being sent in the few weeks leading up to Christmas. The royal seal of approval, so important to the Victorian middle-class, came in 1893 when Queen Victoria ordered them by the thousand from Raphael Tuck and Sons.

The most expensive Christmas card ever - made of ivory and valued in its day at half- a-million pounds - was commissioned by an Indian prince more than 100 years ago. It was decorated with 10,000 scenes from the life of Buddha and had 44 diamonds around the edge. By contrast the smallest Christmas card ever made, inscribed on a single grain of rice which could only be read under a microscope, was sent to the Prince of Wales in 1929. Nowadays, with more than half the population sending at least 50 cards every year, Sir Henry's bright idea has turned into a multi-million pound business.

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