History of the Christmas Card

 

A prominent educator and patron of the arts, Henry Cole travelled in the elite, social circles of early Victorian England, and had the misfortune of having too many friends.

During the holiday season of 1843, those friends were causing Cole much anxiety.

The problem were their letters: An old custom in England, the Christmas and New Year’s letter had received a new impetus with the recent expansion of the British postal system and the introduction of the “Penny Post,” allowing the sender to send a letter or card anywhere in the country by affixing a penny stamp to the correspondence.

Now, everybody was sending letters. Sir Cole—best remembered today as the founder of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London—was an enthusiastic supporter of the new postal system, and he enjoyed being the 1840s equivalent of an A-Lister, but he was a busy man. As he watched the stacks of unanswered correspondence he fretted over what to do. “In Victorian England, it was considered impolite not to answer mail,” says Ace Collins, author of Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas. “He had to figure out a way to respond to all of these people.”

Cole hit on an ingenious idea. He approached an artist friend, J.C. Horsley, and asked him to design an idea that Cole had sketched out in his mind. Cole then took Horsley’s illustration—a triptych showing a family at table celebrating the holiday flanked by images of people helping the poor—and had a thousand copies made by a London printer. The image was printed on a piece of stiff cardboard 5 1/8 x 3 1/4 inches in size. At the top of each was the salutation, “TO:_____” allowing Cole to personalize his responses, which included the generic greeting “A Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year To You.”

It was the first Christmas card.

Unlike many holiday traditions—can anyone really say who sent the first Christmas fruitcake?—we have a generally agreed upon name and date for the beginning of this one. But as with today’s brouhahas about Starbucks cups or “Happy Holidays” greetings, it was not without controversy. In their image of the family celebrating, Cole and Horsley had included several young children enjoying what appear to be glasses of wine along with their older siblings and parents. “At the time there was a big temperance movement in England,” Collins says. “So there were some that thought he was encouraging underage drinking.”

The criticism was not enough to blunt what some in Cole’s circle immediately recognized as a good way to save time. Within a few years, several other prominent Victorians had simply copied his and Horsley’s creation and were sending them out at Christmas.

While Cole and Horsley get the credit for the first, it took several decades for the Christmas card to really catch on, both in Great Britain and the United States. Once it did, it became an integral part of our holiday celebrations—even as the definition of “the holidays” became more expansive, and now includes not just Christmas and New Year’s, but Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the Winter Solstice.

Louis Prang, a Prussian immigrant with a print shop near Boston, is credited with creating the first Christmas card originating in the United States in 1875. It was very different from Cole and Horsley’s of 30 years prior, in that it didn’t even contain a Christmas or holiday image. The card was a painting of a flower, and it read “Merry Christmas.” This more artistic, subtle approach would categorize this first generation of American Christmas cards.  “They were vivid, beautiful reproductions,” says Collins. “There were very few nativity scenes or depictions of holiday celebrations. You were typically looking at animals, nature, scenes that could have taken place in October or February.”

Appreciation of the quality and the artistry of the cards grew in the late 1800s, spurred in part by competitions organized by card publishers, with cash prizes offered for the best designs. People soon collected Christmas cards like they would butterflies or coins, and the new crop each season were reviewed in newspapers, like books or films today.

In 1894, prominent British arts writer Gleeson White devoted an entire issue of his influential magazine, The Studio, to a study of Christmas cards. While he found the varied designs interesting, he was not impressed by the written sentiments. “It’s obvious that for the sake of their literature no collection would be worth making,” he sniffed. (White’s comments are included as part of an online exhibit of Victorian Christmas cards from Indiana University’s Lilly Library)

“In the manufacture of Victorian Christmas cards,” wrote George Buday in his 1968 book, The History of the Christmas Card, “we witness the emergence of a form of popular art, accommodated to the transitory conditions of society and its production methods.”

The modern Christmas card industry arguably began in 1915, when a Kansas City-based fledgling postcard printing company started by Joyce Hall, later to be joined by his brothers Rollie and William, published its first holiday card. The Hall Brothers company (which, a decade later, change its name to Hallmark), soon adapted a new format for the cards—4 inches wide, 6 inches high, folded once, and inserted in an envelope.

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus

 

Virginia O’Hanlon

 

DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.

 

Francis P. Church

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

 

The Letter

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

A Visit from St. Nicholas

'

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too—
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight—

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

 

author – Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Ribbon Farms

 

Ribbon farms are long, narrow land divisions, usually lined up along a waterway. In the United States, ribbon farms are found in various places settled by the French, particularly along the Saint Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, the Detroit River and tributaries, and parts of Louisiana. Near Detroit, the ribbon farms were about 250 feet wide and up to three miles long.

French explorer Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac sailed up the Detroit River in 1701 and settled Fort Ponchartrain du Détroit, named after the comte de Pontchartrain, Minister of Marine under Louis XIV. The river itself became known as the Rivière du Détroit, as détroit is French for the strait. Cadillac was given authority to appropriate and grant land to settlers. Beginning in 1701, he awarded farms that extended two or three miles inland and were laid out with narrow river frontage. Detroit, which grew to 800 people in 1765, became the largest city between Montreal and New Orleans.

The ribbon farm layout gave multiple landowners access to the waterway. In addition, the long lots increased variation in soil and drainage within one lot, and facilitated plowing by minimizing the number of times oxen teams needed to be turned. Where farmers lived on their lots (rather than in a central village), the ribbon farm fostered communication and socialization, with houses clustered at the ends of the lots.

The ribbon farm system also strikes an economic balance, where houses are relatively close together and can be easily and economically accessed, yet the farmers need not spend excessive travel time to reach their fields some distance from a central village. Finally, in those places where ribbon farms were platted, the division of land into long rectangles was relatively easy to survey and establish boundaries.

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Vermont Maple Pecan Cookies

 

 

 

3 Cups old-fashioned oats

1 Cup shredded unsweetened coconut

2 2/3 Cups all purpose flour

1 Tsp. salt

1 Tsp. ground cinnamon

2 Cups packed light brown sugar

1 Cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1/2 Cup Maple syrup

2 Tbs. light corn syrup

2 Tsp. baking soda

1/4 Cup boiling water

1 Tsp. maple flavoring

2 Cups chopped toasted pecans

Preheat oven to 300 degrees, line two baking sheets with parchment paper

Combine oats, coconut, flour, salt, cinnamon, and brown sugar in large bowl, whisk to blend.

Combine butter, maple syrup, and corn syrup in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium low heat until butter melts, stirring occasionally; remove from heat.

Combine baking soda and boiling water, stirring to dissolve. Add to maple syrup mixture stirring well. Add maple extract. Stir well.

Place 1/4 cup size balls of dough on baking, 3 inches apart, flatten balls slightly.

Bake 15 minutes, cool on rack, enjoy.

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

100 years of Ouimetoscope

 

On 1 ^st  January 1906, Montrealers flock to the entry of a new institution of "moving pictures", the Ouimetoscope. Located in the Poiré room, on the corner of Montcalm and Saint-Catherine streets, the new attraction brings home a hundred dollars to its owner, Léo-Ernest Ouimet, in the first week.

 

Born in Saint-Martin on Île Jésus (today Laval) in 1877, Ouimet leaves the family farm to move to Montreal. He learned the trade of electrician and became a theater lighting designer. Strongly interested in the new medium of cinema, he takes care of projections at Sohmer Park, produces short films and creates a company, the Ouimet Film Exchange. The projection device he conceives, the Ouimetoscope, even influences the work realized by Thomas Edison. As part of his documentary achievements, Ouimet will appeal to Lactance Giroux as a cameraman. The latter became, in 1920, the first photographer hired by the City of Montreal.

In 1907, Léo-Ernest Ouimet demolished the building he occupied and began construction of the "Grand Ouimetoscope" which opens these doors in August. The following year, several cinemas opened their doors and the competition became more fierce. The American film distribution monopoly created Canadian branches and thus eliminated Ouimet from this market. At the same time, the Montreal Church began its campaign against Sunday cinematographic performances. At the end of the summer of 1908, Mayor Louis Payette, yielding to the pressure of the League for the observance of Sunday, caused contraventions to the various cinemas. Due to lung problems in two of his children, the Ouimet family settled in California each winter from 1913.

During the First World War, Ouimet withdrew from the projection to redo the distribution again and especially the realization. Among other things, he was given a film about the opening of the Bibliothèque de Montréal by Marshal Joffre in May 1917.

Following the death of two of his children, Ouimet settled down in Los Angeles in 1921, Produced the feature film Why get married that will have little success. His financial situation degraded, he accepted a position for a distribution company in Toronto but returned to Hollywood in 1930. Ruined, he returned to Quebec in 1933 to become a year later manager of the Imperial cinema. Since his financial situation had not improved, he accepted a position as manager of a branch of the Commission des liqueurs. At the time of his retirement in 1956, he was a store clerk. He died on 2 March 1972 at the age of 94 years.

 

In 1978, Léon H. Bélanger's nephew, Léon H. Bélanger, published a book on the life of his uncle and the beginnings of the Quebec cinema, Les Ouimetoscopes. In May 1979, the author handed over his manuscript to the city's archives. This document and its printed version constituted the Fonds Léon H. Bélanger ( P55).

 

- courtesy Archives of Montreal

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved

Mordecai Richler

 

Mordecai Richler, CC, novelist, essayist, social critic (born 27 January 1931 in Montréal, QC; died 3 July 2001 in Montréal, QC).

A singular figure in Canadian literary and cultural history, Richler remained, in the words of critic Robert Fulford, “the loyal opposition to the governing principles of Canadian culture” throughout his long and productive career. His instincts were to ask hard, uncomfortable questions and to take clear, often unpopular moral positions.

Born into an Orthodox family in Montréal’s old Jewish neighborhood, a community he immortalized in his work, he was from the start a complex and uncompromising figure, at once rejecting many of the formal tenets of his faith while embracing its intellectual and ethical rigour. That tension, along with an innately absurdist vision of life, a raw, bracing comedic sensibility, and a fearlessness about speaking his mind, as both artist and citizen, ensured that nearly every word he published displayed a distinctive sensibility. No one else sounded like Mordecai Richler, and few other writers in Canada have ever demanded, and maintained, such a high profile as both an admired literary novelist and a frequently controversial critic. A Companion of the Order of Canada, two-time winner of the Governor General’s Award (1968 and 1971), and winner of the Giller Prize, Mordecai Richler is without question one of Canada’s greatest writers.

Only with his fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, published in 1959, did he learn how to translate his ferocious, satiric, funny take on human behaviour onto the page. With this novel, and its anti-hero, the hard-nosed, unscrupulous, but also energized and empathetic young hustler, Duddy Kravitz, Richler gave Canadian literature one of its most challenging and unresolved protagonists, and one of its first important novels. It won him admirers in London, New York and Toronto, but not so many, it often seemed, among his “people” in Montréal — a pattern that would persist for decades.

By the time he published Solomon Gursky, Richler was a household name in Canada. Often that name was being taken in vain, especially in French-speaking Québec, where his status as a biting and mocking commentator on aspects of the nationalist movement, in particular the language and sign laws introduced in the late 1980s, earned him much enmity. In contrast, for English-speaking Canadians, most piquantly for Jewish Montrealers, many in their fourth decade nursing a grudge against their most famous offspring, he became a kind of reluctant hero, standing up for their community, their city, and for a united Canada, in his own candid, irascible way. Reams of journalism came out of his powerful, bare-knuckled engagement with Québec nationalism, most famously his 1991 New Yorker piece, and the quick, cutting book that grew out of it. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! (1992) is far from his best non-fiction. It is, however, arguably one of the most influential works ever published in the country.

The Final Decade

In his final decade, the now-veteran novelist produced one very good travel book, 1994’s This Year in Jerusalem,and the charming novel that appears, at present, to be the people’s choice among his works. On its appearance in 1997, Barney’s Version became an instant bestseller and, shortly, winner of the Giller Prize, a still relatively new literary award that Richler had himself helped set up a few years earlier. The tale of the outsized, unapologetic, apostate Jew Barney Panofsky was presumed by many to be closely autobiographical. It isn’t, most significantly its portrait of a man who destroys his one great chance at enduring love, but much about the character’s appetite for life, and his philosophy for living, is close to its author’s way of being in the world. New, almost, to Barney’s Versionwas a degree of pathos, and an emotional tenderness, that won Richler new readers and admirers in what was his fifth and, it turned out, final decade of a significant career as a man of letters and that loyal member of the opposition. His death in 2001 was mourned nationally.

 

©2016 Linda Sullivan – Simpson
The Past Whispers
All Rights Reserved