… went on display earlier this month for just three hours (12-3 pm) in a replica Victorian post office in the replica Victorian town of Blists Hill, at Ironbridge in Shropshire. Then it was returned to its resting place in the British Postal Museum and Archive, and was replaced with (you’ve guessed it) a replica.

Christmas being all about replication, it is striking how unfamiliar this item is. It is single-sided, apparently because it is really a glorified calling-card. It was printed in an edition of 1,000 using the relatively new technology of lithography, and coloured by hand. The image on the card is a triptych, featuring sober grisaille scenes of Christian charity to left and right. In the colourful middle section a family seated round a table raises a seasonal toast to the card’s recipient; a small child, encouraged by one of the adults, has already started downing his wine. (This last detail reportedly raised hackles in the Temperance League).

The card was commissioned in 1843 (the year of A Christmas Carol) by Henry Cole, a man whose extraordinary administrative skills must have prepared him well for the rituals of Christmas-card sending. Having reformed the public records, Cole helped invent the penny post; produced timetables for the Railway Chronicle; wrote children’s stories under the pseudonym of Felix Summerly; organized the Great Exhibition; and subsequently initiated the Albert Hall and the fabulous suite of museums in South Kensington. After reading about his life in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, it comes as a mild relief to learn that Cole ‘cared little for his personal appearance’; something, at least, had to give. The DNB suggests that Cole’s Christmas card may have been an offshoot of his work for the Post Office, offering support to those who suspect that all the seasonal greetings are really just another way to sell stamps.

Cole was still sending his card of 1843 in the 1860s, and was keen in later life to lay claim to the invention. Nowadays the few surviving copies retail for up to £8,000 each. You can read more here or here.