Featured Christmas Cards, Era

Here's a sweet moment that is listed as being from the early 1860s.

"Christmas Night"

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Era story, illustrated many times, NYPL has quite a few editions- you see them as cards, too. Not much matches these old illustrations. How lucky are we to have dedicated archivists at LoC, NYPL, Internet Archives, National Archives, all the University and public libraries allowing access?

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Most famous interrupted sleep in America!

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Swear to goodness this is my screen saver......
 
Agree! ❤️

I found this rather cute image ~ Santa calling for back up. A little later though. I think the caption claims it's 1897.
Look at the size of that tree!

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Too dear! No one did vignettes like they did! Oh heck the tree? Swear to goodness we bought our house because the previous owner lost his mind and threw the roof up. It's not a large living room, either, like you see when most raised ceilings are the case. Nope. Log. My husband has a thing for massive Christmas trees, not big, massive. Last year's was 16 feet. SO funny, each year he forgets how heavy it is when 3 of us drag it alllll the way up the path. Because he is the single most wonderful man born on the planet, we just drag harder.

It's not always possible to find a 16. Foot. Tree. Here's one, only a 12 footer from some years ago- don't have the monsters on the laptop. ( Grandson, not one of the ornaments, bottom left )
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This was inevitable. Christmas cards began as a tradition along with everything else, around the time of the Civil War. Slightly earlier, and during those years you can bet it had begun to really spread as a tradition. We have a few of the old ones, sent to ancestors, wish I knew who they were from- friends around the country, none of the names are familiar. They must have been saved simply because someone like the card. Mostly I'm seeing postcards, not folded cards in envelopes, do not know enough to know when this began to change, if it ever was the case. Maybe the postcards survived better, who knows?

Not all of these are era, some later, all are great examples of sending greetings this time of year!
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Thanks for posting these quaint reminders of Christmas past.
Some years ago, in preparing for a move, I threw out many old cards not unlike these. I kept a few in the best shape, later to find out that even some with damage were of some collector value....
 
I have a homemade card made by my g-grandmother for her young son in 1879. Not CW, but pretty close. She pasted images of Santa -- he really was a kind of gnarly elf then -- on cardboard and bordered it with gold paper lace. I remember great Uncle Will as a very old man when I was a child.

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What a treasure! Thanks for sharing!
 
Too dear! No one did vignettes like they did! Oh heck the tree? Swear to goodness we bought our house because the previous owner lost his mind and threw the roof up. It's not a large living room, either, like you see when most raised ceilings are the case. Nope. Log. My husband has a thing for massive Christmas trees, not big, massive. Last year's was 16 feet. SO funny, each year he forgets how heavy it is when 3 of us drag it alllll the way up the path. Because he is the single most wonderful man born on the planet, we just drag harder.

It's not always possible to find a 16. Foot. Tree. Here's one, only a 12 footer from some years ago- don't have the monsters on the laptop. ( Grandson, not one of the ornaments, bottom left )
View attachment 167897
one of the reasons I like my house so much is my home is a copy of general longstreet home in Virginia.
 
I have a whole collection of vintage Victorian Christmas cards that my grandmother used too collect as well as every card that I ever received from everyone in my family for every holiday. I just can't bring myself to throwing them out. I am a very well organized pack rat. David.


How do you throw them away? We pack ours away with the decorations although suspect the children are becoming aware they may have a lot on their hands one day..... .

Isn't it surprising not more companies produce old card designs? There's high demand, year of copyright easily discovered and gosh, so many wonderful cards! The ' vintage ' designs you see tend to be modern artists doing what they feel is a vintage or era print?
 
How do you throw them away? We pack ours away with the decorations although suspect the children are becoming aware they may have a lot on their hands one day..... .

Isn't it surprising not more companies produce old card designs? There's high demand, year of copyright easily discovered and gosh, so many wonderful cards! The ' vintage ' designs you see tend to be modern artists doing what they feel is a vintage or era print?
I don't throw them away. My problem is I have collected too much historical stuff through the years and I am running out of room very quickly. Someday I will have to seriously deal with this situation. David.
 
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