By Philippa Hadlow

Reading time: 13 minutes 

Scrummaging in our lumber-room come Christmas time, I’m guaranteed to find a box of unused greeting cards. They’ve piled up as leftovers from years gone by, and I feel quite chuffed as I haul them out, ready for a spate of virtuous Christmas messaging. My collection includes mostly northern hemisphere-traditional styles, but only a few contemporary examples. We live in antipodean New Zealand. Why then, are we still so enamoured by images of rooftops burdened by snow, pine trees that glisten with pinnacles of ice, and crystal-bejewelled archangels with glorious, feathered wings (which secretly, I have always coveted …)?

I admit that I much prefer those twinkling images to the somewhat stark, slightly kitschy designs that better represent our southern hemisphere country. I suppose the attraction partly lies in appreciating a landscape in complete contrast with the reality of December in New Zealand; barbeques, beaching (if the ubiquitous humidity doesn’t turn to rain), and consumerism.

But it also has to do with colonialism. Researcher Peter Gilderdale says Christmas cards were imported from Europe to New Zealand from the 1860s, only for immigrants to purchase and post home again. This double-handling transaction was deemed foolish by Dunedin’s Evening Star: “Does it not seem folly,” the paper asked, “to send back to the Old Country Christmas cards which were manufactured there and exported hither?”

Early immigrants to New Zealand were deeply challenged by a summer Christmas. It discombobulated their sense of identity and increased their yearning for the familiarity of a winter-white, family-convivial celebration flanked by the religious constructs of the season.

The first consumer Christmas card designed by John Callcott Horsley for educator and patron of the arts Sir Henry Cole in 1843 reflected this imagery perfectly. Its hand coloured triptych engraving depicted a well-to-do, happy Victorian family supping on a red wine of sorts in the throes of merriment whilst acts of charity towards the poor were performed either side. A print-run of 1000 cards was ordered, and each sold for a shilling – slightly less than the one sent by Sir Henry Cole to his grandmother in 1843 which sold at auction in Devizes, Wiltshire in 2001 for a Guinness World Record of £20,000.

The reciprocal Christmas card idea could have been spawned by the new, cheap “Penny Post” system of correspondence in vogue at the time – but in fact, its creation was in direct response to Cole’s anguish at the thought of having to write replies to dozens of acquaintances expecting a missive in return. Time-poor people, like himself, were expected to jump at the chance of posting a simpler and more succinct card instead of a lengthy letter.

However, temperance followers criticised the design for showing children and babies enjoying the wine along with their parents and the card failed to launch a solid industry. After a 20-year hiatus, other renditions became available, encouraged by card publishers’ cash-prize competitions for the best designs. As a consequence, Christmas cards of the 1860s were works of art, and public appreciation grew rapidly. People soon collected them, as they might stamps or butterflies, and each new release would be reviewed in the local newspaper, like a movie or book.

In Europe and the U.K., card design remained northern hemisphere-traditional; family scenes, candle-lit lamps, snowy tree boughs with robin redbreasts trilling from the heights et al. But in Boston, U.S.A., Prussian immigrant Louis Prang began creating a nouveau card style devoid of any snowy Santa nuance. His 1875 designs were nature-based – beautiful reproductions of flowers, animals, and nationally-specific scenery – pictures relevant to any season, yet still carrying a Christmas message. Cards suddenly became commercially relevant and by this time, 200,000 Britons had emigrated to New Zealand, increasing the demand for a way of staying in touch over Christmas. Louis Prang in the U.S. and Raphael Tuck in London both began aggressively marketing their cards to coincide with this movement and by 1879, the practice of sending Christmas cards had reached the point of being accepted as “a permanent and recognised institution” (The Globe, 1879).

In 1881, Sydney firm John Sands initiated a Christmas card competition to encourage new designs. In Australia – like New Zealand – card art had persistently reflected home country scenes nostalgic to English or European immigrants. Now was the hour to make Christmas cards relevant and appropriate to indigenous people, as well, to whom pretty scenes of snow and ice meant nothing. It was a big ask for Australian and New Zealand manufacturers when the majority of their customers and audiences were Brits. The competition was launched, generating a flurry of responses pertinent to the country of origin: native images, flowers, and antipodean landscapes that were in direct contrast to the genres already available. A Star newspaper critique on the results went as follows:

“Though, like most things in this vale of tears, they are not quite perfect, we may hail them as the dawning of a brighter day in Antipodean art. The figure drawing in most of them is very bad, but the native flowers and little landscapes will, in many instances, quite rival the productions of great London houses.” (Random Gossip, 1881).

The change of artistic focus would revolutionise Christmas card art, providing a reimagined alternative to the staple style embraced by migrants till this point.

In New Zealand, ‘Zealandia Christmas Cards’ burst onto the scene, published by Messrs J. Wilkie & Co. Zealandia, revolutionising Christmas card design with brave forays into geographically and culturally specific imagery. Photographs of New Zealand water scenes, ferns, nikau, hill country, mountains, and even starscapes were printed onto cards and posted off to friends and family.

Zealandia Christmas Cards also heralded other attempts to carve a foothold in the locally produced market. The quality and calibre increased, as did product competition and consumer demand, raising prices and, of course, the interest of business entrepreneurs nationwide. As the cards were imprinted with photographs rather than chromolithographic techniques, they were cost-effective to produce. Most were a mix of photography and illustration (a bit of a jumble and possibly an affrontery in any artistically pure sense) but they took off like the legendary comet that in 1882 made them unique to New Zealand.

The Kreutz Sungrazers comet sighting of 1882 was the turning point for nationally patriotic card design. What followed was the triptych “Comet Christmas Card” by designer Nathanial Leves, photographer W.R Frost, and published by Saunders McBeath & Co. The card made headlines, not for its photography – the comet image was actually a black and white painting – but for its visible position in the skies of the Southern Hemisphere. The tryptic’s central panel depicted the highly novel imagery of the comet flying over the Otago Peninsular Hills; the two flanking panels were of mountains, trees, flowers, and ferns. The comet card didn’t try to narrate Christmas as a social or religious festivity (although perhaps the comet created subliminal connection to the Biblical Star of Bethlehem?) but instead as a promotion for colonisation and an enticement for those residing overseas to come to the “idyllic Britain of the South”.

This intent was spelt out by the verse on the reverse of the mount, which provided captions for the scenes and said:

“Summer scenes and flowers are ours at Christmas time,
Not wint’ry frost and snow, as yours in Northern Clime.
But still our hearts commingle, and kindly thoughts arise,
Recalling distant lov’d ones who dwell ‘neath other skies.”

The card immediately catapulted to the must-have Christmas card list. Its authorship remained confused in the public’s mind’s eye – an oversight that still exists in modern-day cards – while the publisher’s name took prominence. Thousands of copies were sold, and other similar designs followed suit with lighthouses, more comets, and even an eclipse taking centre stage. All set out to highlight, rather than subdue, the differences in climate, environment, and social mores between Northern and Southern Hemispheres. This was a radical and rapid twist from Christmas card art that had mimicked Britain’s idealistically snowy imagery a mere five years earlier. Of the 14 New Zealand card styles produced in 1882, the majority were of local scenes, flowers, and iconic landscapes.

Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, though, and even with the growing popularity of nationalistic art, the flood of imports into New Zealand from Europe and the U.K. continued unabated. Familiar to colonists and meaningful to their recipients in Britain, lush, yuletide Christmas cards were here to stay. Wartime increased this sentimentality when hand-stitched festive greeting cards were sent from the Western Front and reciprocated by ‘keep your chin up’, cartoon humour, home front peace, light-hearted, brightly coloured images of Santa, and artwork depicting the importance of patriotic service to one’s country.

In 1915, United States’ Halls Brothers company (which became Hallmark ten years later) changed their card format from a single postcard style to a booklet four inches wide, six inches high, folded once, and inserted in an envelope to allow for more writing. Then, with an open market and public hunger for variety, publishers had to find new ways to sell them. Hall Brothers commissioned famous artists to design a series of images such as those supplied by Salvador Dalí and Norman Rockwell.

In the 1960s, and over the following two decades, colour photography and printing techniques evolved to allow cards to gleam with glossy, glittery, highly coloured, and metallic foil finishes. ‘Make your own’ Christmas cards featuring family photos became hugely popular, too.

However, the most enduring Christmas card image of all time is one of three cherubic angels, two of whom are bowed in prayer. The third peers out from the card with big, baby blue eyes, her halo slightly askew. Traditional, non-nationalistic, idealistic, and published by Hallmark in 1977, it has sold more than 34 million copies and is still going strong. The card truly defines the commercial design requirement to attract a customer’s attention yet also reflect the tone and emotion of the message: a seamless marriage of art and verse. These three cute angels seem to epitomise it all.

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