What Informs the Imagery of Creepy Victorian Christmas Cards?

Material culture can tell us a lot about a period of history, and the Victorian Christmas card is a wonderful example of how an art-object can inform us about the past and our contemporary culture. The visual language of Christmas has changed throughout the centuries, with traditions and belief systems influenced by literature, art, religion and enterprise. The Victorian Christmas ideals and iconography dominate our sense of the holiday today. Victorians made the Christmas tree tradition fashionable, invented Christmas cards, Christmas crackers and popularised Christmas Stockings and reimagined Santa Claus. But their Christmas cards are a world away from our contemporary greetings cards – often depicting totally unrelated imagery to the holiday season. Where did the Victorians get their imagery from? And why did this era shape the festive period so profoundly?

Christmas cards were a British invention that started in the Victorian era. Events during the nineteenth century ignited the collective Victorian imagination and consequently, visual culture. Charles Darwin transformed the perception of the natural world, and Colonialism had opened up new cultural experiences to the West. The Industrial Revolution changed Britain’s social and economic strata; inequality between the rich and poor widened, inspiring authors such as Charles Dickens to write about the uncomfortable, dark truths of humanity within Victorian society. Christmas card art particularly reflected these events and themes; where flora and fauna merged with childhood innocence, nostalgia for the past and contemporary superstition and old Folklore. The Christmas card also fed into the commercialisation driven values of the Victorian mindset – with endless ‘variation and reproducibility’ qualities, and ‘its ability to grow year on year, to open new markets, to entice new consumers and to endlessly proliferate.’ [1]

Image: Dead sparrow illustration ‘ A Loving Christmas Greeting’ ? Tea Tree Gully Library. Dead birds, such as robins, sparrows and wrens, were associated with good luck and fortune in folklore as well as Victorian superstition. Other dead animals could represent the underprivileged in society.

Cockerels riding penny-farthing bicycles, TuckDB Ephemera, free image database

Cheap postage transformed seasonal communication. The first commercial Christmas card, or ‘Christmas Congratulations Card’[2] as it was coined is believed to be a reproduction of a design by John Callcott Horsley in 1843, commissioned by Henry Cole, a senior civil servant. However, the idea of the Christmas card was initiated by Queen Victoria years before. Royal gift-giving was a tradition which harked back to Medieval times and was popular in the Early Modern period; however, this traditionally took place on New Year’s Day.[3] 

The first ‘Christmas Congratulations Card’ ? Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Cole’s card was in keeping with the dichotomy of Victorian Britain. A family is indulging in food and wine, whilst depicting ‘good deeds’ by caring for the poor on either side of this scene; akin with Christian values. The illustrations are framed by leaves and vines – which looked back to a simpler, rural, more idyllic English country life and the folk practices of our ancient ancestors.

The first commercial cards were expensive to buy and send, and thus the giving of Christmas cards remained an elitist practice. However, as time went on, postage became more affordable; namely, the ‘halfpenny post’ for postcards in 1870 gave rise to the trend of the mass-sending of Christmas cards, which had also become more affordable or people simply made their own. Indeed, Cole is widely credited with reforming the British postal system and encouraging the exchange of greetings cards.

Christmas cards were collector's items – even in Victorian times! According to the V&A Museum ‘Victorians exchanged, displayed and collected Christmas cards in vast numbers.’[4] This could account for the enduring iconography of Christmas as we know it today and why so many Christmas cards exist in private and public collections. Indeed, History.com states, ‘ Many Victorian Christmas cards became parlour art, or people added them to their scrapbook collections.’[1] Today, Victorian Christmas cards look bizarre, but at the time, people would have understood their meaning. Moral messages surrounding the common crimes of the day, pagan traditions, science, art, and global discovery combined to create striking imagery. Often, designs purposefully omitted religious symbolism as cards were seen as secular objects.

‘With Season’s Greetings’, C 1880s, ?Fleet Library Picture Collection, Rhode Island School of Design

Flowers were a dominant motif in Victorian visual culture through the ‘language of flowers’ in which flowers were used to convey secret messages or symbolise feelings in the highly formal and repressed social etiquette at the time.[1] Victorian Britain focused on manufacturing – eroding much of the cottage industries and folk art practices; however, Christmas cards symbolise the unique character of the era and serve as a creative outlet within the period of mass production.

Greetings cards saved you time – and thinking up mushy things to say to relatives and acquaintances. Greetings cards were also time efficient in comparison to letter writing – as many depicted a pre-written slogan or poem. Patricia Zakreski concedes that Christmas cards were more than merely commercial items as the central part of their functionality served in delivering sentimentality, unlike other mass-produced objects or art at the time.[5]

By Siegmund Hildesheimer, C 1832–1896 ‘If I were only with you or you were here, We’d have a merry Christmas and a bright New Year.’ ?Fleet Library Picture Collection, Rhode Island School of Design.

Victorian-era Christmas postcard. Public domain and copyright free.

Eventually, by the late 1800s, more recognisable festive and religious scenes were commonplace on Christmas cards. Indeed, illustrator Thomas Nast in 1881 emblazoned the depiction of ‘Santa Claus’ in popular culture – inspired by Clement Clarke Moore’s published poem ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’, in 1823, forever changing the iconography of Christmas.[6] You can see the original illustration here.

Good Ol’ Saint Nick. Victorian-era Christmas card. Public domain and copyright free.

References

[1] Zakreski: 2015, 125

[2] History.com https://www.history.com/news/christmas-traditions-tudor-england

[3] British Library https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/first-christmas-card

[4] Victoria & Albert Museum https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/the-first-christmas-card

[5] History.com https://www.history.com/news/victorian-christmas-cards

[6] almanac.com https://bit.ly/2Lb1B7u

[7] Zakreski: 2015, 123

[8] The Vintage News https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/12/09/thomas-nast-the-man-who-invented-santa-claus/