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Holiday Cards of Yesteryear from the Archives
The art of sending and receiving Christmas cards in the mail has dwindled, though it has not entirely vanished. I remember, when I was young, my parents signing cards and putting them in envelopes, addressing and stamping them, and taking them to the post office for delivery. The cards they received were displayed on the living room wall through the holiday season. Some years they made their own cards out of construction paper and paint with a process called silk screening. Other years they bought cards at the store, knowing that boxes of Christmas cards could be bought at half price right after Christmas. (Of course, one must then find a place to store the cards that will be remembered eleven months later.)
Christmas cards helped people stay in touch with old friends and with family members scattered across the country. Before digital communication, mail was more affordable than phone calls, which were the only other way to share messages over a long distance. Christmas cards also helped build ties to newer acquaintances—coworkers, neighbors, fellow church members, and other families were often added to the Christmas card list each year. Sending and receiving cards marked a level of social engagement, one that came into focus as a family sifted through the day’s mail in December and sometimes tried to remember, “Did we send them a card this year?”
Because holiday greetings sent through the mail were an accepted custom, businesses used similar greetings to advertise their wares. Politicians sent Christmas cards to their supporters. Even the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies sent out Christmas cards in the 1990s! For some families, Christmas cards offered an opportunity to share their faith—from “Jesus is the reason for the season” and “Wise men still seek Him” to the more traditional “Peace on earth, goodwill toward all.” Other families offered less specific hopes of “Happy Holidays” and “best wishes for the season.”
Most people treated Christmas cards as a disposable holiday commodity. Even if they were displayed for a while in December and into January, they disappeared afterward with the wrapping paper, the greenery, and the last crumbs of fruitcake. A few families, though, treasured and preserved their cards. Scattered through the collections of the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, assorted Christmas cards of every kind linger as reminders of a holiday ritual that kept the ties of kinship, friendship, and neighborliness from unraveling.
Click on the center picture of each gallery to view the larger images.
The following cards come from the Tom Dillard papers, which are still being processed. They include a card from the Butler Center, 2001, with the back cover included. The card from Bill and Hillary Clinton is from 1993.
The following postcards from the Ron Robinson collection are from, respectively, 1909, 1928, 1908, 1910, and 1913.
The card below comes from the Connett-Gunn collection. Although it looks nicely old-fashioned, it is from 1984. (Which could still be considered old-fashioned to some!)
The first image comes from the Penick-Worthen-Brandon collection. The girl in the photo postcard is Mary “Cissie” Penick, and it is dated ca. 1940. The next three images are front and back covers and sample inside pages from a booklet found in the Hogan-Huie family collection. As you can see from the back cover, the songbook was a gift from the John Hancock Life Insurance Company.
The following cards come from the William L. Terry papers.
The following three cards, from 1946 and 1947, are from the Boosey family collection. The photograph card was inside the third card.
The following cards come from the William Champs Rodgers collection, and they all date from around 1910. They include both postcards and standard cards. Some of them are samples from the Arthur Thompson & Company of Baltimore, Maryland. They sold greetings like these custom-made to merchants in batches of 100—a batch of postcards for five dollars, and a batch of standard cards for six dollars, with additional discounts for larger orders (half price if one thousand were ordered).
These final images come from the Carol Mann Gannaway Eruren family collection. They were received by the Charles L. Thompson family of Little Rock and by George Thompson.
By Steve Teske, archivist at the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies/Roberts Library
