Christmas Card Maker

Design a Victorian Christmas card: choose its picture, its border and its paper, and write your greeting inside. Then print it and fold it.

The first card, a hand-coloured lithograph, carried the greeting “A merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, with spaces for the names of the sender and the recipient. Source: V&A, Christmas card, MSL/1987/3293

Write inside the card: who it is for, your message, and your name.

Nothing you write is saved or sent.

The holiday's revival gained momentum under Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who popularized German customs like the Christmas tree, while the first Christmas cards appeared in the 1840s.

Henry Cole, the first director of the V&A, sent the first Christmas card in 1843. His friend, the artist John Callcott Horsley, illustrated it, and a thousand copies were printed. Source: V&A, “The first Christmas card”

It prints on one Letter page. Fold the top half back behind the bottom, printing outside; then fold the left half back behind the right, and the picture is on the front.

Nothing you write is saved or sent.