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Antique Christmas
 The Christmas Card Tale
by Wayne Mattox
How do you tell somebody you care? Go to the
store, buy a card and let somebody else do the telling
for you.
The oldest Christmas card created for general
distribution probably was created by William Egley Jr.; a
16 year-old British youth. His 3 1/2-inch- by 5
1/2-inch, 1842 printed impression, preserved in the
British Museum, depicts four holiday scenes and a "Merry
Christmas and Happy New Year" greeting with blanks after
the word "To" on the top and "From" at the bottom.
Industrious kid.
By 1860, many kinsmen had embraced Egley's
concept. Rival greeting card firms began employing
prominent artists such as Kate Greenaway, the beloved
illustrator of children's books.
The father of American Christmas cards was
award-winning Boston lithographer/inventor Louis Prang,
who, in 1873, reproduced a holiday card autographed by
Christmas Carol author, Charles Dickens. Perhaps the
greatest of Prang's many innovations was the development
of a multi-color printing process that incorporated as
many as 20 colors on one print or card. Hues and
detailing were so vivid that artists were sometimes not
able to distinguish their own works from reproduced
chromos (chromolithographic prints) when hung side by
side on a wall.
Taking full advantage of this technology, Prang
employed the finest artisans of his day. Card painters
included the likes of Frederick S. Church, Arthur F. Tait
and Winslow Homer. Poetic geniuses such as Longfellow,
Tennyson and William Cullen Bryant were among those hired
to write verses.
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