FACTORALY - CHRISTMAS: DAY 3 - CARDS

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

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Merry Christmas, Simon. Merry Christmas, Bruce. Welcome to Factorial, everyone. Yes, hello, everyone. This is a special because we are going to be giving you 12 in 12 days, because there are 12 days of Christmas. Indeed, instead of the usual one a week, you get one every single day for the whole 12 days of Christmas. But because it's one a day, they're obviously not as long as they normally are. Indeed. So these are going to be relatively short, relatively punchy, quick little snippets of festive, Christmassy, informative fun.

Yeah, of course we're going to take a subject every day. Yes. But the subjects will be Christmas relevant. Indeed. So that's the plot. Let's get on with it. Off we go. So Simon, what's today's subject? Today, Bruce, we are going to be talking about Christmas cards. Oh, I hate doing Christmas cards.

Do you? Do you know, when I was younger, I used to have like a whole load of labels printed out that I could just stick on the envelopes. Yes, yes. Thank you for the present. Love, Bruce. Oh, no, to be fair, on the envelopes, so they don't have to address every single one. I hand-wrote each one inside, though. Oh, well done. Oh, that's very good. Well, one has to.

Mind you, the cost of stamps these days. Yes, I know. Yes. I no longer take offence by that. I used to be a postman. Every time someone complained about how much it cost to send a Christmas card, I used to feel slightly guilty. But not in my department. So who first started sending Christmas cards then?

Hard to say. People have been sending things that vaguely resemble Christmas cards-ish for quite a long time. In the 15th century across Europe, people would sort of give each other prints inscribed in thin layers of wood. And it sort of had seasons greetings and wishes for a good year yeah well yes i mean it's about the words isn't it not that it's actually a card no exactly exactly i understood that um the president of the of the victorian albert museum yes a chap called henry cole was the first person to actually send a christmas card back in

1843 yes i didn't realize that's who he was i i read the name myself um so he had he had 1000 christmas cards commissioned um which were designed by a fellow called john calcott horsley and they were each hand colored and um hen Henry Cole sold them for a shilling each. He sold them? Yes. Apparently so. So I'd originally read it as, he ordered these cards to give to friends and families and things.

But he ordered a thousand of them. But didn't they feature his family though, didn't they? They didn't feature... Well, again, maybe we're reading different sources it featured a family yes gathered around a window it had a message saying a merry christmas and a happy new year to you i haven't read that it was specifically his family i had read that they were just a generic commercial endeavor okay well i i understood it was three generations of his family toasting the reader oh i prefer that let's go with that but the idea that you make your own christmas cards I understood it was three generations of his family toasting the reader.

Oh, I prefer that. Let's go with that. But the idea that you make your own Christmas cards and then flog them. Yes. I quite like that. A bit questionable, isn't it? So he sold them for a shilling? So one of the sources that I read claimed, yes. They've been sold since, though.

They have. One of them went recently for £20,000. Goodness me. What, one of his for £20,000. Goodness me. What, one of his original £1,000? One of his original Christmas cards. Wow. I don't know if that's a lot or not. I mean, it's a lot for a Christmas card.

I mean, it's... It's more than the postage. It certainly is. So, yes, that sort of happened as a one-off occasion the the idea caught on a few other producers started you know making a few cards here and there here and there um it was a couple of chaps called the hall brothers who specifically came up with the idea of having a piece of card that was folded in two with a picture on the front and a message in the middle um did they have a mark they did have a mark yes they did yeah so these these two hall brothers uh created the company hallmark yay um they're

sort of quite responsible for the folded card concept you know opening a card up and don't look there's a message inside possibly with a five pound note from auntie marjorie who knows do you know i've never thought about it before but, there's a message inside. Possibly with a £5 note from Auntie Marjorie, who knows? Do you know, I've never thought about it before, but actually there's a kind of an anticipation to opening a card, isn't there? Yeah, there is, absolutely. There's an excitement to it. Yes, who's it from? If you haven't already guessed by the handwriting on the envelope.

What does it say? Yes, exactly, yeah. I found this fact out quite recently. Apparently, Victorian postmen were nicknamed Robins because they wore bright red uniforms. Oh, right. And many Christmas cards started featuring Robins on the picture on the card,

sitting atop a mailbox, or actually with a Christmas card in their beak, delivering it to someone, because they're Robins. And that's what the nickname was for the postman interesting so robins robins exist all year round they're not inherent they don't sort of come out at christmas time but it's because of that that they have become so associated with the pictures on christmas cards and and christmas itself I found a Guinness World Record a gentleman in San Francisco called Werner Erhard

he sent the largest number of Christmas cards in one particular year in 1975 he sent 62,824 Christmas cards it didn't say who to either that's a really large family or he just wrote random names.

I don't know, but quite a few. I have friends who reuse Christmas cards. Do you? Yeah, what they do is they cut the front off somebody else's Christmas card, stick it to the Christmas card that they've got, write a note in it with the year, and then they send it to a specific friend.

Oh, that's great and then that friend uses that card again for the next year and sends it back very nice i heard that the late queen sent quite a lot of cards as well oh really yeah i don't think she sent quite that many as that. I believe that President Eisenhower was the first US president to start officially sending cards. Again, I don't know who they send this to. It's surely not going to every single person in America. Heads of state. Heads of state and dignitaries and important folk.

Yes. Yes. Well, thank you for listening to this Christmas special. Indeed. Thank you very you for listening to this Christmas special. Indeed. Thank you very much for coming along. We hope you'll join us again next time for another fun-filled episode of Fact or Really. Bye-bye.

Au revoir.