We’re kicking off a theme week on Christmas Firsts! Today we’re talking about the first Christmas card. The first commercially available card was commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London in 1843. Cole received stacks of holiday mail from friends and colleagues. It was considered very impolite not to reply, so he needed an efficient way of responding to them. So he commissioned a lithograph card, designed by John Callcott Horsley, and had 2,050 printed. They were sold for a shilling each, which was roughly a day’s wage at the time. Understandably, Christmas cards didn’t really become popular until around 20 years later. Across the pond, Louis Prang is known as the “Father of the American Christmas Card”. He owned a lithograph company, which began selling Christmas cards here in the states in 1874. By the 1880s, his firm was printing over 5 million cards a year. Today, Christmas is the largest card-sending holiday in the United States, with around 1.3 billion sent every year. Learn more in the audio below!