According to various sources1 of information from the Internet, the custom of sending Christmas cards began in Britain around 1840 when the 'Uniform Penny Post' was first introduced to public postal deliveries, helped by the new railway system which enabled the public postal service in the 19th century. The Uniform Penny Post was a postal system that used a uniform rate of one penny to deliver normal letters of weight not exceeding half an ounce for any local post. This was how the prepaid postage stamp came to be established, which till this day is still being used by many postal systems around the world.
Following the introduction of the Penny Post postal system, Sir Henry Cole, a wealthy British businessman and prominent innovator of the 1800s who was also the person who modernized the British postal system, commissioned London respected illustrator and artist John Calcott Horsley in the summer of 1843 to design an impressive card for that year's Christmas, one that he could proudly send to friends and professional acquaintances to wish them a merry Christmas. The word 'merry' was used in those days as a spiritual word for 'blessed' as in ‘merry old England’ and that was how the first Christmas card was born.
Thirty years later, the idea of Christmas cards caught on with the Americans when Boston lithographer Louis Prang, a native of Germany, began publishing the cards in 1875 and earned the title 'father of the American Christmas card.' Today more than two billion Christmas cards are exchanged annually just within the United States, and Christmas is the number one card-selling holiday of the year.
Long before the idea of a Christmas card was even conceived, people were already exchanging handwritten holiday greetings, first in person, then via post, much like the way the Apostle Paul sent his greetings in his epistles (Philippians 4:21; 2 Thessalonians 3:17). Paul wrote the greetings with his own hand as a distinguishing mark in his letters, and such greetings had been a source of encouragement to many in building ties and relationships beyond the boundaries of different churches, cultures and geographical separators, in and off festive seasons. Given such richness of blessings deriving from written words of greetings, we should therefore continue with this tradition and not neglect reaching out to people through this mode of communication, whether it be by snail mail greeting cards or online e-cards, especially to the ones whom we may not be able to meet up due to distance constraints, or who may be faraway, overseas, or in another town.
This Christmas, therefore, let us rethink how we should rekindle our interest in sending out Christmas cards to greet and bless people. Do we know of a missionary who needs encouragement, or someone who needs cheering up, or a friend who needs the Lord? Remember, we can do our part in making this a special Christmas for them, and we can touch some hearts by simply adding a few words of our own to spice up the card with sincerity and truth to show we care. May God bless the sender and recipient of Christmas cards!
Dear Lord, help us in our haste not to forget the people You love, the missionaries, the pre-believers, our friends, colleagues and relatives. Teach us Lord to pen down meaningfully words of encouragement and care in adding these words to our Christmas cards. Do not let us take for granted what we can do through greeting cards such as these, in blessing each and everyone who receives the card, to let them know the special Someone who cares enough to come from heaven to earth to save us all.
1 SOON Online Magazine; The Great Idea Finder; Wikipedia (Accessed on November 22, 2008).
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