‘The First Christmas Card Was Dreamed Up By An Art Bureaucrat’

“It was Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882), first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, who – daunted at the thought of writing by hand piles of greetings to his friends – came up with the idea in 1843. That first card represented three generations of an early Victorian family, flanked by scenes of charitable acts, celebrating by drinking goblets of wine.”