Tag Archives for christmas cards

Destination 2018

As we celebrated the holiday season and closed out 2017, we worked with five fantastic lifestyle influencers to share their holiday traditions and New Year’s resolutions through handwritten notes.

First, our partners started off by sharing their holiday traditions on one of our newest collections – our Home for the Holidays: City holiday cards. We loved seeing how everyone celebrates the holiday season each year and the sense of connectedness to family and loved ones.

A few days later, in anticipation of New Year’s Day, our partners posted a selection of photos featuring their goals and resolutions for 2018.

We’re excited to share our friends’ posts with you – after all, it’s a new year, let’s start it on a new note!

… Here’s to a fantastic year ahead.

 

Jackie Greaney

@jackiegreaney moved to a new home in 2017, but her old traditions of bourbon milk punch & cookies for neighbors and handwritten holiday cards continued on. Jackie used our collaboration with The Maryn to jot down her 2018 goal of doing more international travel (preferably to someplace warm)!

 

Beth and Danielle, Palm Beach Lately

Christmastime in NYC holds special memories for @palmbeachlately because Danielle and her husband got engaged here during the holiday season. Beth and Danielle chose our Palm Beach Collection: Everglades Island set to share their 2018 goal of finding more ways to spread the Palm Beach sunshine!

 

Meghan Murray

@meghanmurray’s favorite holiday traditions include enjoying tea and cookies while staying cozy and writing Christmas cards to friends. Meghan shared that she hopes to have a new year filled with lots of great food (and champagne, of course) and travel adventures. Our Jet Set: Paris cards surely set the tone for a travel-filled 2018!

 

Carissa Burton

@carissa_burton shared a few of the wonderful Christmas traditions in her family, like singing Christmas carols by the fire with eggnog and gathering in the kitchen to decorate sugar cookies. Carissa used our Palm Beach: Tarpon Island cards to write down her dreams for 2018, like committing to unplug for a bit each day and giving back to the community.

 

Andrea Nunez

@andreannu spent her first holiday season in New York and was able to experience the magic of the Rockefeller Center tree and all of the festivities around the city. Her first holiday season away from home prompted a new tradition of sending handwritten notes back home to her family and loved ones overseas. Andrea then used our Jet Set: New York cards to create a bucket list for all of the new places in and around New York City that she’d like visit in 2018!

Holiday Cards: A Brief History

Did you know that December 9th is known as “Christmas Card Day” to honor the anniversary of the first commercially sold holiday card? We found this article by John Hanc to be very helpful in its thorough account of the history of holiday cards.

During the 1800s in England, the British postal service introduced the “Penny Post” system which allowed people to send a letter anywhere in the country by affixing a penny stamp to the envelope. Sir Henry Cole, prominent patron of the arts and founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, found it difficult to keep up with the piles of mail that he would receive during the holiday season.

firstchristmascard-jpg

Sir Cole’s first Christmas Card

Cole hit on an ingenious idea [in 1843]. He approached an artist friend, J.C. Horsley, and asked him to design an idea that Cole had sketched out in his mind. Cole then took Horsley’s illustration—a triptych showing a family at table celebrating the holiday flanked by images of people helping the poor—and had a thousand copies made by a London printer. The image was printed on a piece of stiff cardboard 5 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches in size. At the top of each was the salutation, “TO:_____” allowing Cole to personalize his responses, which included the generic greeting “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You.”

Many of Cole’s Victorian aristocratic contemporaries started to send out their own Christmas cards in the following years, and the trend reached The United States several decades later. The custom of sending holiday cards quickly became an integral part of the season, and people would line up at card shops in order to catch a glimpse of the newest designs for that year.

Dempsey & Carroll’s founding in 1878 coincided with the recent boom in popularity for Holiday Cards. In our 1880 book The Art of Correspondence, Messrs. Dempsey & Carroll published the press release to announce their new holiday collections.

artofcorrespondence

We have imported the most elegant Christmas Cards ever brought to this city. We call your attention to the fact that WE SHALL OPEN ABOUT DECEMBER FIRST an assortment of fine Christmas Cards excelling anything ever offered. LAST SEASON A GREAT NUMBER OF OUR PATRONS were disappointed that they purchased elsewhere before seeing ours; stating that ours were the handsomest they had seen. Please call early to avoid the crush that delay occasions.

138 years later, we still take great pride in unveiling our new designs for the holiday season. In modern times, however, our new collections are usually done with production by the end of June and are on display for the press by mid-July. Many of our clients are already looking to order their Holiday cards by early fall so as not to feel rushed in December.

We’ve expanded upon our offerings in recent years by combining multiple printing techniques for many of our new holiday collections. Our commitment to providing the highest quality of craftsmanship to our clients remains strong as we continue to creative beautiful designs for 2017 and beyond.

Though technology has greatly changed since Sir Cole’s first Christmas card in 1843, the joy of sending holiday cards to family and friends is a feeling that transcends time.