Short Stuff: Christmas Cards

You ever thought about where those cards you send out during the holidays came from? Prepare to do just that!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck and this is short Stuff and this is
the special Christmas Week version of Short Stuff. So for
this for this episode, Chuck, we're going to do a
special Christmas e themed one that also, you can make
an argument is card themed as well. That's right, and

(00:24):
we got to give a big shout out to our stuff.
You shnow. Army member and old friend Robert Paulson also
now sends us Christmas ideas every year as a gift
to us. I think, yeah, he actually says, this is
your holiday gift for me, so don't expect anything else.
But they're good ideas. Yeah, he's He's like, I just
want to make sure that the Christmas episodes never dry

(00:45):
up or go away. So he's doing his part, which
is pretty sweet, and he's not the only one. Every
once in a while, some other people sends some ideas,
but Paulson actually sends links. So that's amazing, and this
is one of them. He suggested we do one on
Christmas cards and thank you, Robert. We're going going to
do that right now. Yes, and also thanks to t Town,
Britannica Victorian Albert Museum in Smithsonian, And we need to

(01:07):
talk about Sir Henry Cole, one of the one of
the early pioneers of industrial design. Yeah. I don't know
if he's known as the father of it or not,
but he very well maybe not okay, but he's close.
He's the how we'll call him the grand pappy of
industrial design. Hum, well, the father came after. It's one
of those things where like you know, he probably he's

(01:28):
probably is the grand pappy. So he said that he
laid the germs of a style. Um, so yeah, I
guess that was. That's not being the father, that's the
grand pappy. So um, that's not the only thing he did.
Just doing that would probably be enough to be remembered.
But he was like a civil servant. He was a
patron of the yards. He was an important figure in
the UK in the eighteen forties fifties. In eighteen fifty

(01:52):
two he became the founding director of the UM, the
Victorian Albert Museum, which is a world famous art and
design museum. UM and leading up to that, he was
just kind of like a man about town and he
made a lot of He was a very popular guy,
apparently a good person, and he made a lot of

(02:12):
friends and acquaintances, and that actually became problematic for him, Chuck,
because one of the things that was a tradition in
Victorian England was that around the holidays you would write
a letter to your friends and relatives and acquaintances people
you cared about. And um, that was fine. Like Henry
Cole could have conceivably gotten away without writing letters because

(02:37):
he was a very busy guy, and still the Victorians
would have considered impolite and genteel. It was a different
side of that same tradition that eventually tripped him up. Yeah,
you gotta write people back, unfortunately, and I think we
all can identify with an email inbox where you have

(02:57):
to write these people back. You can't just ignore these
things and couldn't back then. You can't now I guess
you could, but you be rude. So he would get letters,
lots and lots and lots of letters because he was
a popular guy, and he found himself in a bind
around the holidays because he just didn't have time to
get back to everyone. So he invented the Christmas card. Yeah,
it's it's indisputable, Like he was the guy that did it. Um,

(03:20):
and he did it by being a big old patron
of the arts. He um got in touch with a
friend of his, John cow Horsely, and said, hoarsely, you
old dog, can you please draw me a great holiday
themed image that I can use to transfer a thousand
times onto card stock. And Horsely did just that. He

(03:40):
made a very sweet little design. In the middle is
Sir Henry and his family I think a few generations
of his family, and they're all toasting and um engaging
in merriment. Then on the side they're helping out like
the poor um. And then at the top it says
to colon blank and then I think it said like
Merry Christmas in Happy New Year, uh, from Sir Henry Cole.

(04:03):
And there's maybe a little bit of a space for
him to like write like a hush or something as well.
But that was it. That was the first Christmas card,
and you sent him out in the Christmas of eighteen
forty three. Brilliant idea time saver. Although people in Victorian
age didn't think it was a little bit of controversy
to it because they were like, you know, you didn't

(04:24):
the point of these Christmas letters is you tell everyone
what's going on. You catch everyone up on your family,
what little uh Timmy is doing, what little Janey is doing? Um,
how bad our alcohol problem is his parents in Victorian England?
What kind of various diseases are going through the family
right now? And we get none of this with this card.

(04:48):
And he went, yeah, but you know what, you're missing
the point. That is the point I'm thinking about you guys,
what more needs to be said? Yeah, stop being so grabby,
so needy. Just accept your card and be happy for once,
like today. So this required like a little bit of
a transition for the Victorians to get over this, this
this kind of social transition from these very long drawn

(05:11):
out letters and the the expectation that they'd be replied
to these slightly impersonal at least compared to letters Christmas cards.
But they actually did finally kind of stick. It wasn't
like an instant hit, but by the eighteen sixties they
were definitely there and they were helped along, Chuck by
a few um other factors that all kind of converged

(05:32):
together that basically said Christmas cards are it and they're
here to stay, and no one cares that little Todd
cholera this year We don't want to hear about that.
We just want the beautiful image in the happy New
Year and marry Christmas, well wishes. That's right, and we'll
get to those convergences right after this. Alright, So the

(06:21):
Christmas card is invented. Christmas started to become really really
popular as a holiday in Victorian England, so that all
of a sudden was converging with the invention of the
Christmas card, which also converged with the UK, or at
least Great Britain introducing the penny posts, where anybody gets
into postcard for a penny, which was affordable for almost everybody,

(06:44):
and all of these things kind of coming together at
once meant all of a sudden, the Christmas card was
a real deal thing. So one thing about that penny
post was that Sir Henry Cole himself actually helped get
that passed through Parliament, which is pretty neat that he
had his hand in that as well. But um also
one of the other things that cemented Christmas in the
aisles was Charles Dickens and Christmas Carol, like really laid

(07:07):
the foundation for how we understand Christmas today, and that
book came out the same year that Sir Henry Uh
mailed his first Christmas cards back in eighteen forty three.
So all these things came together, and like I said,
by the eighteen sixties, Christmas cards were happening, not just
in the UK, but they've made their way over to
the US as well. That's right. And the first American

(07:29):
printer of the card was Louis or Louis Prang, who
was in Roxbury, mass And he debuted his cards in
eighteen seventy three, Uh, and he also held the design contest.
So I think some of these printers were entrepreneurs, they
knew how to run a printer, weren't necessarily artists, so
they would do people still do you know, commission artist

(07:51):
contest today And that was kind of the first Christmas
cards in the United States. Yeah, And so for a
little while there, it looked like Christmas cards were going
to go the way of Disco. Would eventually go a
century or so later, um with the introduction of gim cracks,
which were also called geegaws or do dads or whatever.
They're just basically little um like a figurine or costume jewelry.

(08:15):
I saw somebody explain they're just a little something you
can mail very easily. It says, here's your Christmas President,
I'm thinking of you. And those actually replaced Christmas cards
for a couple of decades in the United States. That's right,
about twenty years. They went away, but they came back.
I think once cameras became a bigger thing. You could
include a photo of the family, which was a big deal.

(08:37):
Offset printing came around. You could do multiple colors. You
could do that green and you could do that red
at the same time, and it made him a big deal.
Of course, in the Hallmark finally comes around and starts
making Christmas cards, and uh they as well as Louis
Prang and other folks. They commissioned works from great artists

(08:58):
including Salvador Dali, Norman Rockwell, Grandma Moses, and Jackie Kennedy.
Have you seen Dolly's Christmas cards? Yeah? It was pretty
I mean I love everything Dolly does. Yeah, pretty cool.
One of them is Santa Claus growing out of the snow.
It's like Dolly doing a Christmas card. It's perfect. Yeah,
it's great. The but um Hallmark also owns the best

(09:21):
selling Christmas card of all time, called Three Little Angels
that debuted in which you have almost certainly seen um
because it's still in print today. You can still find
it today. But it almost looks like a drawing of
some kind of precious moments e Um, angels and like
three like they all are are praying, but one of

(09:42):
them's like got our eyes open and looking at you
from the card. Um. But that one has sold something
like thirty four million copies. At least it's a lot
of copies. That was a Gangbusters Christmas card is the
best Hallmark could have ever hoped for. That's right. These
days there are digital all ternatives. A lot of people
just send either on social media or through email or

(10:05):
something that'll send a digital version. Because Christmas cards are
pretty wasteful. Uh. There are two point five billion holiday
cards sold in the US every year, and that's enough
to fill a football field tin stories high. And so
if you're gonna do Christmas cards, you might want to
look into u not using an envelope, just use that postcard.
If if you gotta mail something, maybe looking to recycled

(10:27):
paper post consumer recycling is great. Uh, maybe use wood
based paper, Maybe use hemp or veggie fiber. This one sad.
This next one is well, you cannot recycle the glossy
ones or the metallic finishes. So if you're gonna use those,
those are gonna go in a landfill. Yes, and they're
gonna have to be fully replaced next year by brand
new trees, which is say it's right. Also another one

(10:49):
and by the way, this is from t Town, which
is a nature preserve in the Hudson Valley. Their blogs
suggested these. Um the last one is hilarious because it's
gonna make some really great friends out of the people
who you work with about the year. But do you
want to contact your Dennis veterinarian or you know other
people and say, can you please take me off of
your Christmas card? Yeah, which is awkward, but it will

(11:12):
save the planet, so it's worth it. Because do you
really care what your Dennist thinks of you? I don't.
I need to go so they don't like me right now.
I've never sent Christmas cards in my life. Uh, we
don't do it, but I do appreciate it when people
send them. And I want to shout out Emily's aunt

(11:32):
peg who they do the Christmas newsletter every year, which
I really love. You get a big like one page
sheet about the family and all those things we talked about,
catching everyone up on what everyone's been doing throughout and
on intoo and it's really really nice. So big shout

(11:53):
out to Aunt Peg and her cousin Alex for this
great Christmas tradition in that family. Todd got caller this year. Yeah,
hopefully that doesn't happen, so big shout out to Aunt
Paig always means everybody that we wish you a merry
Christmas and a happy Holidays. And that short stuff is out.

(12:16):
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