Facts you (probably) did not know about Christmas cards

1. The first commercial Christmas card was crafted and sent in England in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole. He was a civil servant, an assistant keeper of public records.

2. It was designed by artist Sir John Horsley. The card design was made up of three panels—the two outer panels showed people caring for the poor and the center panel showed a family sharing a Christmas dinner.

3. The Christmas cards were each sold for a shilling. That’s roughly a day’s wage for workers of the era.

4. In 2001, the most expensive card was sold at an auction for £ 22,500 (almost PhP 1.5 M). It was a card sent by Sir Henry Cole to his grandmother back in 1843.

5. Christmas cards arrived in the US in the late 1840s. In the early 1870s, Louis Prang, a printer and lithographer, mass-produced cards so more people could afford them. It featured children, plants, and flowers.

6. In 1915, Joyce Clyde Hall and his brothers created Hallmark Cards after a fire destroyed the office and inventory of their first company, Hall Brothers.

7. Hallmark recognized the public’s desire for privacy and a bigger writing space; hence it began circulating cards that were folded in the middle and enclosed in envelopes.

8. First introduced in 1977, Hallmark Cards’ “Three Little Angels” is the most popular Christmas card design of all time. The 42-year-old design features an image of three cherubs—two of which are bowed in prayer and the third has a drooping halo—and the words “God bless you, love you, and keep you… at Christmas time and always.”

9. In 2018, the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK created the world’s smallest Christmas card made from platinum-covered silicon nitride. It is 15 x 20 micrometres in size, so you could fit over 200 million of this card in a single postage stamp. On the cover is a snowman and the message “Season’s Greetings,” and on the inside is the same message plus the words “From NPL.” Both were carved using a focused ion beam.

10. In the 1950s, Manuel Rodriguez Sr. produced the first locally made Filipino-themed Christmas card series, composed of 12 prints, featuring local touches such as parol, pig roasting, and scenery of Simbang Gabi.