Christmas Cards

In the late 1800s, a Christmas card became the primary way to send a yearly message to friends and family. The earlier tradition of sending Happy New Year cards and Valentine’s Day cards to non-romantic friends had fallen out of fashion . Christmas cards were imported starting in the 1850s, but they were expensive and didn’t become popular until Prang and Mayer, a lithography firm with a factory in Roxbury Mass, began selling Christmas cards in 1874, becoming the first printer to offer cards in America. Its owner, Louis Prang, is sometimes called the “father of the American Christmas card.”

Humorous and sentimental images of children and animals were popular in early cards. Snow scenes, religious scenes, and Santa Claus cards were later additions. Sometimes the cards had envelopes or were the more economical postcards. Judging from our collection, cards with silk fringe seem to have been popular in Harvard, or maybe they were so special that more were saved.