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The first commercially printed Christmas card scandalised the Temperance society so much that it took three years before another was produced.
The first commercially printed Christmas card scandalised the Temperance society so much that it took three years before another was produced. Photograph: Dennis MV David/AP
The first commercially printed Christmas card scandalised the Temperance society so much that it took three years before another was produced. Photograph: Dennis MV David/AP

First commercially printed Christmas card up for sale

This article is more than 3 years old

177-year-old card believed to have gone on sale same year Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published

The first commercially printed Christmas card is up for sale – a merry Victorian-era scene that scandalised some when it first appeared in 1843.

The card, which is being sold online through a consortium run by Marvin Getman, a Boston-based dealer in rare books and manuscripts, depicts an English family toasting the recipient with glasses of red wine.

“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You,” it reads. But for teetotallers – and there were plenty of those in the 19th century – the imagery included a bit too much holiday cheer: in the foreground, a young girl is pictured taking a sip from an adult’s glass.

That did not sit well at the time with the puritanical Temperance Society, which kicked up such a fuss it took three years before another Christmas card was produced.

“They were quite distressed that in this scandalous picture they had children toasting with a glass of wine along with the adults. They had a campaign to censor and suppress it,” said Justin Schiller, founder and president of Battledore, a Kingston, New York-based dealer in antiquarian books who is selling the card.

Getman said the hand-coloured lithograph is believed to have been a salesperson’s sample. Only 1,000 copies were printed and sold for a shilling apiece, and experts believe fewer than 30 have survived, he said.

The card, intended to double as a greeting for Christmas and New Year’s Day, was designed by the painter and illustrator John Callcott Horsley at the suggestion of Sir Henry Cole, a British civil servant and inventor who founded the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Cole is widely credited with starting the tradition of sending holiday cards, a multimillion-dollar industry today.

It is believed to have gone on sale in the same week in December 1843 that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published.

Christie’s auction house in London also is selling one of the rare cards and says it expects the item to fetch between £5,000 and £8,000 ($6,725 to $10,800).

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