While the month of December is the official month for the shipping of presents, gifts are not the only things flooding the postal service during the last month of the year. Christmas cards account for much of the mail that is sent during this time of year and make up a large and very profitable portion of the commercially printed card industry.
Commercially printed holiday greetings are thought to have begun replacing the handwritten variety in England in the middle eighteen hundreds. The popularity of these printed pieces took hold in Europe very quickly even though the practice of exchanging handwritten wishes went back centuries.
While the customers who were purchasing these works of art were thrilled with this latest development, one group of people were definitely not happy about it. The postal services in several countries were having trouble keeping up with the amount of post being sent during December even when the holiday greetings were being handwritten. The situation in the United States was so distressing to the postal service that the Postmaster made a formal request to the United States government to limit the amount of mail each family was allowed to send and receive in order to allow the mail service to keep up with the demand.
These manufactured masterpieces were instantly successful in England and then in Germany, though the English postal service had to be completely redesigned to handle the amount of mail being sent during the holidays. While Europe was enthralled with the new product, the United States was not yet sure that it wanted to entertain the idea of printed salutations.
In the United States, families were still hand writing their holiday wishes to each other and they were not impressed by the printed pieces being exchanged in Europe. There were several factors involved in their slow acceptance of this new product.
These early printed pieces were beautiful and artistic, but were also very expensive. This was a problem for the customers in the United States as the items they ordered from Europe were even more expensive after being shipped all the way to the Americas. Combined with the shipping damages that often occurred with paper goods during that time and the inability to guarantee timely shipments, it would be many years before the United States would be ready to embrace commercially manufactured pieces.
A solution was provided for the customers in the United States by Germany when they began manufacturing penny per piece cards. These pieces were much more affordable once they reached the country, even with the addition of shipping costs. American citizens were finally persuaded to embrace the printed holiday greetings and American manufacturers began production as soon as they were able.
Christmas cards are now exchanged worldwide among people who celebrate Christmas and they serve a variety of different purposes. There are pieces that share family photographs, that bring a little bit of home to soldiers overseas, that are made by children and some that are just a reminder of the joy of the holiday. Whatever the reason for sending them, the greeting card industry as a whole loves Christmas and sells over a billion cards each year during the month of December. Of course, someone has to deliver all of those that were purchased. The postal service of each nation should definitely be remembered during this time of year for their dedicated service.
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Due to the widespread utilization of the Internet, you may buy traditional Christmas cards almost any day of the year. Religious Christmas cards can be found in many specialty shops and boutiques online.
