The Maryland Historical Society (MdHS) will explore the evolution of holiday greeting cards in the new exhibit, “Season’s Greetings: Holiday Cards in Maryland, 1865-2005,” which opens Thanksgiving weekend and will be on view through February. Dozens of cards will be on display, from New Year’s calling cards of the 1870s to elaborate Victorian Christmas cards to Kwanzaa and Hanukkah cards of the present day.

Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa greeting cards are modern inventions rooted in old traditions. Both the ancient Egyptians and ancient Romans sent New Year’s greetings, as did medieval Europeans. As Christianity spread, the New Year’s greetings took on religious overtones and sometimes included references to Christ. In England starting in the 1700s, children created “Christmas pieces” – handwriting samplers with Christmas greetings. By the early 1800s in both England and America, people wrote letters to distant loved ones at Christmas, using illustrated notepaper. People also sent New Year’s greetings and even created calling cards specifically for New Year’s visits.

New Year’s card, late Nineteenth Century.

The first Christmas card dates to 1843, when Englishman HenryCole lacked the energy or the time to write his usual Christmasletters. He commissioned a painter, John Calcott Horsley, to designa Christmas card. Horsley’s Christmas card was the size of acalling card and depicted a triptych, with a happy family in thecenter panel surrounded by panels depicting poor people needingcharity. Horsley succinctly wished the recipients, “A MerryChristmas and a Happy New Year to you.”

By the 1860s, the development of color printing made Christmas cards readily available in England, and Americans eagerly imported them. An American variety store owner, R.H. Pease of Albany, N.Y., is often credited with making the first American Christmas card. Like Horsley’s, it featured a happy family at its center but objects of indulgence and fun, such as gifts and drinks and dancers, surrounded the family rather than Horsley’s objects of charity. It is not clear if Pease sold his cards or simply sent them to customers as a greeting.

Louis Prang became the true “Father of Christmas Cards” in America. A Boston-based lithographer, Prang produced some cards in 1874 for sale abroad. The next year, he began selling cards in America, and by 1882, he was printing five million Christmas cards annually. Prang produced very high-quality cards that were themselves gifts. Exquisitely colored, his cards frequently had satin backgrounds, silk tassels and other elaborate touches.

The growing popularity of Christmas cards resulted from the spread of free mail delivery, first to cities and then to rural areas, which made sending cards cheaper and more practical than earlier, and the invention of the traditional American Christmas in the late Nineteenth Century. Buffeted by industrialization and urbanization, threatened culturally by mass immigration from Europe and distanced from loved ones by Americans’ geographic mobility, wealthy and middle-class Americans created a modern Christmas full of acts and rituals that harkened back to an imaginary simpler time, a time when everyone knew their neighbors, worshipped in the same church and eschewed materialism.

Cards of the mid-Nineteenth Century rarely featured religious scenes, but depicted flowers, trees, birds and other images. By the late Nineteenth Century, images grew more seasonal with greens, such as ivy, holly or mistletoe; winter scenes, such as a snow-covered church or skaters on a frozen pond; or children sledding, playing with dolls and other similar activities. The cute children and women drawn by Kate Greenaway proved particularly popular. Non-Christians could join in by sending New Year’s cards, which were readily available.

The 1920s witnessed another change in greeting cards. “Olde English” motifs – manor homes with butlers and Dickensian village scenes associated the senders with the upper class. Also popular, however, were modern cards with sleek Art Deco graphics. Cards by special interest groups also drew many buyers. What remained uncommon were religious scenes. Many cards, in fact, simply wished the recipient “Season’s Greetings” rather than even mentioning Christmas.

Christmas card, 1909.

For the remainder of the Twentieth Century, cards reflectedtheir times. During the Depression, cards often were smaller andless colorful. World War II brought patriotic cards and V-mailcards. In 1949, UNICEF first produced Christmas cards for sale,followed ever since by many other charities and museums seeking toraise money. In the 1960s and 1970s, cards became quite varied,depicting the senders’ personal interests. Gag cards became common,as did cards depicting local scenes. In the 1980s, religious cardsfinally gained a significant share of the market. Nostalgia, too,had its place, with Thomas Kinkade cards in the 1990s harkeningback to Christmases of the late 1800s.

The late Twentieth Century saw the development of two new types of cards celebrating the Jewish holiday Hanukkah and the African American holiday Kwanzaa. Kwanzaa was established in 1966 by Maulana Karenga, who was born Ron Everett in Parsonsburg, Md.

The library of the Maryland Historical Society is at 201 West Monument Street. For information, 410-685-3750 or www.mdhs.org.