Unlike many holiday traditions-can anyone really say who sent the first Christmas fruitcake?-we have a generally agreed upon name and date for the beginning of this one. At the top of each was the salutation, “TO:_” allowing Cole to personalize his responses, which included the generic greeting “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You.” The image was printed on a piece of stiff cardboard 5 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches in size.
Cole then took Horsley’s illustration-a triptych showing a family at table celebrating the holiday flanked by images of people helping the poor-and had a thousand copies made by a London printer. Horsley, and asked him to design an idea that Cole had sketched out in his mind. “He had to figure out a way to respond to all of these people.”Ĭole hit on an ingenious idea.
“In Victorian England, it was considered impolite not to answer mail,” says Ace Collins, author of Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas. As he watched the stacks of unanswered correspondence he fretted over what to do. Sir Cole-best remembered today as the founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London-was an enthusiastic supporter of the new postal system, and he enjoyed being the 1840s equivalent of an A-Lister, but he was a busy man. The problem were their letters: An old custom in England, the Christmas and New Year’s letter had received a new impetus with the recent expansion of the British postal system and the introduction of the “Penny Post,” allowing the sender to send a letter or card anywhere in the country by affixing a penny stamp to the correspondence. A prominent educator and patron of the arts, Henry Cole travelled in the elite, social circles of early Victorian England, and had the misfortune of having too many friends.ĭuring the holiday season of 1843, those friends were causing Cole much anxiety.
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