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WIKIBOOKS
DISPONIBILI
?????????

ART
- Great Painters
BUSINESS&LAW
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CARS
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GAMES&SPORT
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LIFESTYLE
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TRADITIONS
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NATURE
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ARTICLES IN THE BOOK

  1. A Christmas Carol
  2. Advent
  3. Advent calendar
  4. Advent wreath
  5. Aguinaldo
  6. Ashen faggot
  7. Belsnickel
  8. Bethlehem
  9. Biblical Magi
  10. Black Friday
  11. Boxing Day
  12. Bubble light
  13. Buche de Noël
  14. Burgermeister Meisterburger
  15. Caganer
  16. Candy cane
  17. Christkind
  18. Christmas cake
  19. Christmas card
  20. Christmas carol
  21. Christmas cracker
  22. Christmas dinner
  23. Christmas Eve
  24. Christmas flowers
  25. Christmas gift-bringers around the world
  26. Christmas lights
  27. Christmas market
  28. Christmas music
  29. Christmas number one
  30. Christmas ornament
  31. Christmas pickle
  32. Christmas pudding
  33. Christmas pyramid
  34. Christmas seal
  35. Christmas stamp
  36. Christmas stocking
  37. Christmas stories
  38. Christmastide
  39. Christmas traditions
  40. Christmas trees
  41. Christmas village
  42. Christmas worldwide
  43. Companions of Saint Nicholas
  44. Cranberry sauce
  45. David Zancai
  46. Ded Moroz
  47. Ebenezer Scrooge
  48. Eggnog
  49. Elf
  50. Epiphany
  51. Father Christmas
  52. Frosty the Snowman
  53. Fruitcake
  54. Ghost of Christmas Past
  55. Ghost of Christmas Present
  56. Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
  57. Gingerbread
  58. Gryla
  59. Heat Miser
  60. History of some Christmas traditions
  61. Hogmanay
  62. Holly
  63. Jack Frost
  64. Jolasveinar
  65. Joulupukki
  66. Julemanden
  67. Koleda
  68. La Befana
  69. Lebkuchen
  70. Little Christmas
  71. Marzipan
  72. Mince pie
  73. Mistletoe
  74. Mr. Bingle
  75. Mrs. Claus
  76. Mulled wine
  77. Nativity Fast
  78. Nativity of Jesus
  79. Nativity scene
  80. Nine Lessons and Carols
  81. North Pole, Alaska
  82. Nutcracker
  83. Olentzero
  84. Origins of Santa Claus
  85. Pandoro
  86. Panettone
  87. Panforte
  88. Pantomime
  89. Père Noël
  90. Poinsettia
  91. Regifting
  92. Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree
  93. Royal Christmas Message
  94. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
  95. Saint Nicholas
  96. Santa Claus
  97. Santa Claus Is Coming to Town
  98. Santa Claus on film
  99. Santa Claus parade
  100. Santa Claus' reindeer
  101. Santa Claus rituals
  102. Santa's Grotto
  103. Santon
  104. Secret Santa
  105. Snap-dragon
  106. Snow baby
  107. Snow Miser
  108. Star of Bethlehem
  109. Stollen
  110. The Grinch
  111. Tiny Tim
  112. Tio de Nadal
  113. Tomte
  114. Tree topper
  115. Turron
  116. Twelfth Night
  117. Twelve days of Christmas
  118. Twelve-dish Christmas Eve supper
  119. Wassail
  120. Wassailing
  121. White Christmas
  122. Winter holiday greetings
  123. Winter holiday season
  124. Xmas
  125. Yule
  126. Yule Goat
  127. Yule Lads
  128. Yule log
  129. Zwarte Piet

 

 
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    ENGLISHGRATIS.COM è un sito personale di
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CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS
This article is from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_card

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_the_GNU_Free_Documentation_License 

Christmas card

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
For the album from The Partridge Family, see Christmas Card (album).
Some Christmas cards
Enlarge
Some Christmas cards

A Christmas card is a greeting card that is decorated in a manner that celebrates Christmas. Typical content ranges from truly Christian symbols such as Nativity scenes and the Star of Bethlehem to purely secular references, sometimes humorous, to seasonal weather or common Christmastime activities like shopping and partying. Christmas cards are exchanged during the Christmas season (around December 25) by many people (including non-Christians) in Western culture and in Japan.

Some Christian groups (such as Jehovah's Witnesses), however, disdain the celebration of holidays without explicit Biblical authorization, and so neither celebrate Christmas nor exchange Christmas cards.

History

The world's first Christmas card, made by John Callcott Horsley
Enlarge
The world's first Christmas card, made by John Callcott Horsley

The first commercial Christmas cards were commissioned by Sir Henry Cole in London, 1843, and featured an illustration by John Callcott Horsley. The picture, of a family with a small child drinking wine together, proved controversial, but the idea was shrewd: Cole had helped introduce the Penny Post three years earlier. A batch of 1000 cards was printed and sold for a shilling each.

Early English cards rarely showed winter or religious themes, instead favoring flowers, fairies and other fanciful designs that reminded the recipient of the approach of spring. Humorous and sentimental images of children and animals were popular, as were increasingly elaborate shapes, decorations and materials. In 1875 Louis Prang became the first printer to offer cards in America, though the popularity of his cards led to cheap imitations that eventually drove him from the market. The advent of the postcard spelled the end for elaborate Victorian-style cards, but by the 1920s, cards with envelopes had returned.

Cards continued to evolve throughout the 20th century with changing tastes and printing techniques. The World Wars brought cards with patriotic themes. Idiosyncratic "studio cards" with cartoon illustrations and sometimes risque humor caught on in the 1950s. Nostalgic, sentimental, and religious images are once again popular, and reproductions of Victorian and Edwardian cards are easy to obtain.

"Official" Christmas cards began with Queen Victoria in the 1840s. The British royal family's cards are generally portraits reflecting significant personal events of the year. In 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued the first official White House card. The cards usually depict White House scenes as rendered by prominent American artists. The number of recipients has snowballed over the decades, from just 2000 in 1961 to 1.4 million in 2005.[1]

Modern Christmas cards can be bought individually but are usually sold in packs of the same or varied designs. A revival of interest in paper crafts, particularly scrapbooking, has raised the status of the homemade card and made available an array of tools for stamping, punching and cutting. Advances in digital photography and printing have provided a more technological way to personalize cards with photos, messages, or clip art.

Technology may also be responsible for the decline of the Christmas card. The estimated number of cards received by American households dropped from 29 in 1987 to 20 in 2004.[2] Email and telephones allow for more frequent contact and are easier for generations raised without handwritten letters - especially given the availability of websites offering free email Christmas cards. Nonetheless, with 1.9 billion cards sent in the U.S. in 2005 alone, they are unlikely to disappear any time soon.[3]

From the beginning, Christmas cards have been avidly collected. Queen Mary amassed a large collection that is now housed in the British Museum.[4] Specimens from the "golden age" of printing (1840s-1890s) are especially prized and bring in large sums at auctions. In December 2005, one of Horsley's original cards sold for nearly £9000. Collectors may focus on particular images like Santa Claus, poets, or printing techniques.

The Christmas card list

Many people send cards to both close friends and distant acquaintances, potentially making the sending of cards a multi-hour chore in addressing scores or even hundreds of envelopes. The greeting in the card can be personalized but brief, or may include a summary of the year's news. The extreme of this is the Christmas letter (below). Because cards are usually exchanged year after year, the phrase "to be off someone's Christmas card list" is used to indicate a falling out between friends or public figures.

Many businesses, particularly smaller local businesses, also send Christmas cards to the people on their customer lists, as a way to develop general goodwill, retain brand awareness and reinforce social networks. These cards are almost always tasteful, and do not attempt to sell a product, limiting themselves to mentioning the name of the business. The practice harkens back to "trade cards" of the 18th century, an ancestor of the modern Christmas card.[5]

Christmas letters

Some people take the annual mass mailing of cards as an opportunity to update everybody with the year's events, and include the so-called "Christmas letter" reporting on the family's doings, sometimes running to multiple printed pages. While a practical notion, Christmas letters meet with a mixed reception; recipients may take it as boring minutiae, bragging, or a combination of the two. Since the letter will be received by both close and distant relatives, there is also the potential for the family members to object to how they are presented to others; an entire episode of Everybody Loves Raymond was built around conflict over the content of just such a letter.

Variants on the concept

In 2004, the German post office gave away 20 million of free scented stickers, to make Christmas cards smell of a fir Christmas tree, cinnamon, gingerbread, a honey-wax candle, a baked apple and an orange.

Charity

Many organizations produce special Christmas cards as a fundraising tool. The most famous of these enterprises is probably the UNICEF Christmas card program, launched in 1949. More charities are introducing Christmas cards as part of a trend toward personal identification between donor and cause.[6]

Since 2000, the U.K. conservation charity Woodland Trust has sponsored an annual campaign to collect and recycle Christmas cards to raise awareness of recycling and collect donations from corporate sponsors. Its goal for 2007 is to collect 90 million cards by year's end. [7]

References

  • BBC Devon News Story of the first commercial Christmas card, including picture. Retrieved 2 Jan 2006.
  • BBC December 3, 2005: First Christmas card sold for £8,469. Retrieved 2 Jan 2006.
  • A History of Christmas Cards by a private collector
  • The History of Greeting Cards including many galleries of images
  • Old Christmas cards from Ukraine
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_card"