The Christmas card, as we know, born in England in the year 1843. An artist named John Calcott Horsley was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole a rich and successful businessman in London, to create a card that could be sent to his friends and clients to wish them a Merry Christmas.
Sir Henry Cole was well known at the time, for a number of reasons. He had a hand to help modernize the British postal system. He played a leading role in building the Royal Albert Hall, and acted as manager for the construction of this huge project. He also organized the Great Exhibition of 1851, and oversaw the inauguration of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
One of Sir Henry Cole's greatest aspirations in life was to beautify the world around him. He owned and operated a wonderful art shop on Bond Street, which specialized in decorative objects for the home. His shop was hugely popular with the British upper class, and earned a tidy sum from his business.
The Christmas card that was commissioned fashioned in the form of a triptych, which is a three-panel design that allows two external panels from a folded toward the center. Each of the two side panels represented a good deed. The first shown the image of people dressed to the poor, and the side panel showed the image of people feeding the hungry. The centerpiece was the image of a wealthy family in a toast and surrounded by a huge feast.
The inscription on the inside of the card read "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you." Of the one thousand cards printed for Sir Henry Cole, only twelve exist today in private collections. The print media has become very fashionable in England during the years that followed. He also became very popular in Germany. It took a long time for the idea of taking in America, then popularized by a German expatriate named Louis Prang in 1875. Today, over 2 billion Christmas cards are exchanged each year. Merry Christmas to all!
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