Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Christmas Cards

Episode Date: December 22, 2021

You ever thought about where those cards you send out during the holidays came from? Prepare to do just that! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is short stuff. And

this is the special Christmas week version of short stuff. So for this, for this episode, Chuck, we're going to do a special Christmassy themed one that also you can make an argument is card themed as well. That's right. And we got to give a big shout out to our stuffy snow army member and old friend, Robert Paulson. Paulson now sends us Christmas ideas every year as a gift to us, I think. Yeah, he actually says this is your holiday gift for me, so don't expect anything else. But they're good ideas. Yeah, he's like, I just want to make sure that the Christmas episodes never dry up or go away. So he's doing his part, which is pretty sweet. And he's not the only one. Every once in a while, some other people send some ideas, but Paulson actually sends links.

So it's pretty amazing. And this is one of them. He suggested we do one on Christmas cards and thank you, Robert. We're going to do that right now. Yes. And also thanks to Tea Town, Britannica, Victorian Albert Museum and Smithsonian. And we need to talk about Sir Henry Cole, one of the one of the early pioneers of industrial design. Yeah, I don't know if he's known as the father of it or not, but he very well may be. He's not. Okay. But he's close. He's the, we'll call him the grandpappy of industrial design. How about that? Well, the father came after. It's one of those things where he probably is the grandpappy. So he said that he laid the germs of a style. So yeah, I guess that's not being the father. That's the grandpappy. So that's not the only

thing he did. Just doing that would probably be enough to be remembered. But he was like a civil servant. He was a patron of the arts. He was an important figure in the UK in the 1840s, 50s. In 1852, he became the founding director of the Victorian Albert Museum, which is a world famous art and design museum. And leading up to that, he was just kind of like a man about town. And he made a lot. He was a very popular guy, apparently a good person. And he made a lot of friends and acquaintances. And that actually became problematic for him, Chuck, because one of the things that was a tradition in Victorian England was that around the holidays, you would write a letter to your friends and relatives and acquaintances, people you cared about. And

that was fine. Like Henry Cole could have conceivably gotten away without writing letters because he was a very busy guy. And still the Victorians would have considered him polite and gentile. It was a different side of that same tradition that eventually tripped him up. Yeah, you got to write people back, unfortunately. And I think we all can identify with an email inbox where you have to write these people back. You can't just ignore these things and you couldn't back then. You can't now. I guess you could, but you'd be rude. So he would get letters, lots and lots and lots of letters because he was a popular guy. And he found himself in a bind around the holidays because he just didn't have time to get back to everyone. So he invented the Christmas

card. Yeah, it's indisputable. Like he was the guy that did it. And he did it by being a big old patron of the arts. He got in touch with a friend of his, John Calcutt Horsley, and said, Horsley, you old dog, can you please draw me a great holiday themed image that I can use to transfer a thousand times on the card stock? And Horsley did just that. He made a very sweet little design. In the middle is Sir Henry and his family. I think a few generations of his family and they're all toasting and engaging in merriment. Then on the side, they're helping out like the poor. And then at the top, it says to Colin Blank. And then I think it said like, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from Sir Henry Cole. And there's maybe a little bit of a space for him to like

write like a huzzah or something as well. But that was it. That was the first Christmas card. And he sent them out in the Christmas of 1843. Brilliant idea. Time saver. Although people in Victorian age didn't think it was a little bit of controversy to it because they were like, you know, the point of these Christmas letters is you tell everyone what's going on. You catch everyone up on your family, what little Timmy is doing, what little Janey is doing, how bad our alcohol problem is, his parents in Victorian England, what kind of various diseases are going through the family right now. And we get none of this with this card. And he went, yeah, but you know what? You're missing the point. That is the point. I'm thinking about you guys,

what more needs to be said. Yeah, stop being so grabby, so needy. Just accept your card and be happy for once. Yeah, like today. So this required like a little bit of a transition for the Victorians to get over this, this kind of social transition from these very long drawn out letters and the expectation that they'd be replied to, to these slightly impersonal, at least compared to letters, Christmas cards. But they actually did finally kind of stick. It wasn't like an instant hit, but by the 1860s, they were definitely there. And they were helped along, Chuck, by a few other factors that all kind of converged together that basically said Christmas cards are it, and they're here to stay. And no one cares that little Todd cholera this year. We don't want to

hear about that. We just want the beautiful image in the Happy New Year and Merry Christmas well wishes. That's right. And we'll get to those convergences right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird. Fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father.

And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So the Christmas card is invented. Christmas started to become really, really popular as a holiday in Victorian England. So that all of a sudden was converging with the invention of the Christmas card, which also converged with the UK, or at least Great Britain, introducing the penny post where anybody gets into postcard for a penny, which was affordable for almost everybody. And all of these things kind of coming together at once meant all of a sudden the Christmas card was a real deal thing. So one thing about that penny post was that Sir Henry Cole himself actually helped get that passed through Parliament, which is pretty neat that he had his hand in that as well. But also one of the other things that cemented Christmas in the Isles was Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, like really laid the foundation for how we understand Christmas today. And that book came out the same year that Sir Henry mailed his first Christmas cards back in 1843. So all these things came together. And like I said, by the 1860s, Christmas cards were happening, not just in the UK, but they made their way over to the US as well. That's right. And the first American printer of the card was Louis or Louis Prang, who was in Roxbury, Mass. And he debuted his cards in 1873. And he also held the design contest.

So I think some of these printers were entrepreneurs, they knew how to run a printer, weren't necessarily artists. Right. So they would do, people still do, you know, commission artist contest today. And that was kind of the first Christmas cards in the United States. Yeah. And so for a little while there, it looked like Christmas cards were going to go the way of disco would eventually go a century or so later. With the introduction of gim cracks, which are also called gigaws or doodads or whatever. They're just basically little like a figurine or costume jewelry. I saw somebody explain, they're just a little something you can mail very easily. It says, here's your Christmas present. I'm thinking of you. And those actually replaced Christmas cards for a couple of decades in the United States. That's right. About 20 years, they went away, but they came back. I think once cameras became a bigger thing, you could include a photo of the family, which was a big deal.

Offset printing came around. You could do multiple colors. You could do that green and you could do that red at the same time. And it made them cheaper too. Of course. And then 1915 Hallmark finally comes around and starts making Christmas cards. And they as well as Louis Prang and other folks, they commissioned works from great artists, including Salvador Dali, Norman Rockwell, Grandma Moses and Jackie Kennedy. Have you seen Dali's Christmas cards? Yeah, it was pretty. I mean, I love everything Dali does. Yeah, pretty cool. One of them is Santa Claus growing out of the snow. It's like Dali doing a Christmas card. It's perfect.

Yeah, it's great. But Hallmark also owns the best selling Christmas card of all time called Three Little Angels that debuted in 1977, which you have almost certainly seen because it's still in print today. You can still find it today. But it almost looks like a drawing of some kind of precious momenty angels. They all are praying, but one of them has got our eyes open and looking at you from the card. But that one has sold something like 34 million copies at least. It's a lot of copies. That was a gangbusters Christmas card. It's the best Hallmark could have ever hoped for. That's right. These days there are digital alternatives. A lot of people just send either on social media or through email or something.

They'll send a digital version because Christmas cards are pretty wasteful. There are 2.5 billion holiday cards sold in the U.S. every year, and that's enough to fill a football field. Ten stories high. Wow. And so if you're going to do Christmas cards, you might want to look into not using an envelope. Just use that postcard. If you've got a mail something, maybe look into recycled paper. Post-consumer recycling is great.

Maybe use wood-based paper. Maybe use hemp or veggie fiber. This one's sad. This next one is. Well, you cannot recycle the glossy ones or the metallic finishes. So if you're going to use those, those are going to go in a landfill. Yes, and they're going to have to be fully replaced next year by brand new trees, which is sad. That's right. Also another one, and by the way, this is from Tea Town, which is a nature preserve in the Hudson Valley. Their blog suggested these.

The last one is hilarious because it's going to make some really great friends out of the people who you work with throughout the year. But you want to contact your dentist veterinarian or other people and say, can you please take me off of your Christmas card list? Yeah. Which is all awkward, but it will save the planet, so it's worth it. Because do you really care what your dentist thinks of you? I don't. I need to go, so they don't like me right now. Yeah.

I've never sent Christmas cards in my life. We don't do it, but I do appreciate it when people send them. And I want to shout out Emily's Aunt Peg, who they do the Christmas newsletter every year, which I really love. You get a big, like one page sheet about the family and all those things we talked about, catching everyone up on what everyone's been doing throughout 2021 and on into 2022. And it's really, really nice. So big shout out to Aunt Peg and her cousin Alex for this great Christmas tradition in that family.

Yeah. Todd got cholera this year. Yeah, hopefully that doesn't happen. So big shout out to Aunt Peg always means everybody that we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays, and that short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts to my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.