Christmas Cards

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Christmas Cards

As with much of modern Christmas traditions Christmas cards are a Victorian invention. The very first Christmas card recorded was created by Sir Henry Cole (who was later to become the director of the Victoria and Albert museum), however it was Louis Prang, a German lithographer who emigrated to the USA in the 1850s who popularised sending Christmas cards by accident.

Prang had invented a cheap method of copying and printing oil paintings in colour. So, as a method of self-promotion, he created a series of cards at Christmas and sent them off to friends and potential clients with the message "Merry Christmas". It caught on and within a few years he was printing five million cards per year.

Nowadays the Christmas card industry is so powerful they have, through the power of the media, developed Christmas in countries that do not have it as part of their religion or traditions (such as Japan) just so that they can sell more cards.