First commercially printed Christmas card to be auctioned at Christie’s

The first commercially printed Christmas card is to be auctioned next week. Commissioned by Sir Henry Cole and designed by John Calcott Horsley, it shows a family toasting the health of an absent friend. All the characters are holding glasses except for the three smallest children, who are eating plum pudding.

The card, published the same year as Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in 1843, is expected to sell for between €5,500 and €9,000. It is currently on show at Christie’s saleroom in central London ahead of the auction house’s forthcoming Classic Week sales.

The idea of the Christmas card proved popular, but it was not immediately reprinted because of criticism by the Temperance League, which campaigned against alcohol consumption.

Other cards were designed and printed from November 1844 onwards, but the Horsley-Cole card remains the earliest known. Believed to survive in 21 copies, it is inscribed by the sender to “My very dear Father & Mother” and signed “Their loving son, Joe”.