Opinion: In 1980s Ireland, the festive season was heralded by the daily arrival of Christmas cards, not decorations
These days, Christmas seems to come earlier each year. Before Halloween is even finished, festive products begin appearing in shops, while some people start to put up their decorations in November. When I was a child in the 1980s, houses were not decorated until mid-December. In their place, the festive season was heralded by the daily arrival of Christmas cards.
Sent by friends and family, from far and wide, they brightened up what Patrick Kavanagh referred to as an 'Advent darkened room'. Starting as a trickle of a few per day from the start of the month, their numbers increased to a daily deluge by Christmas, by which time the postman was truly deserving of his Christmas tip. While Christmas cards are popular worldwide, we've added our own unique Irish twist to the tradition in a number of ways.
Christmas cards are now a global multi-million-euro retail phenomenon. Although Christians have been wishing each other Christmas greetings for hundreds of years, the Christmas card is only a relatively recent invention. Britain’s Henry Cole is said to have invented them in 1843. Cole - hugely influential in design education - commissioned a printed card that offered season’s greetings to his wide social network, saving him handwriting many letters. It took a while for the idea to catch on, but throughout the 19th century, lower costs for postage as well as mass colour printing meant sending Christmas cards became affordable for more people and quite fashionable.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Is the tradition of sending Christmas cards on the way out?
By the early 20th century, sending and receiving Christmas cards was a popular habit among the Irish population. Irish printers offered their own take on indigenous designs in green and gold, with archetypal ‘Celtic’ designs associated with national pride. These designs were deemed appropriate for sending greetings from home to many Irish emigrants around the world.
A popular design motif for Irish cards included religious scenes evocative of rural Ireland. The Cuala Press produced some memorable Christmas cards, one design by Beatrice Elvery placed the Virgin Mary in an Irish cottage ironing clothes alongside a sleeping baby Jesus. The Virgin features in a similar domestic Irish scene in an illustration by Sadhbh Trinseach for The Irish Christmas published by the Three Candle Press (1917). The setting of the Virgin Mary firmly in rural Ireland should come as no surprise, as by tradition the Holy Family were close to the rural Irish imagination. For example on Christmas Eve, it was common to place lit candles in windows as a sign of welcome to them as they ‘passed’ over Ireland.
Read more: Is sending Christmas cards good for your mental health?
In a similar vein, Jack B Yeats' card featuring shepherds in silhouette with their broad brimmed hats could be Irish rural farmers, while the ever-present background figures in scenes of the Nativity, the cow and the donkey (aka the 'Irish tractor’), have always held special regard in rural Ireland. The popularisation of the Nativity scene is said to go back to St Francis of Assisi, himself a lover of animals, and the presence of animals were included in the scene where they had not been in the biblical description. An Irish tradition held that farm animals were gifted extra feed and bedding over Christmas.
By the time of my own childhood, the Christmas card tradition was firmly established with my parents’ generation. As a kid, I imagined there were hundreds of cards in the house by last post on Christmas Eve. The cards were usually written by the woman of the house, identified by the fine and feminine handwriting. Of course you had to send in order to receive, and I recall my mother bedecked in reading glasses, writing them long into the night, sighing at the chore of writing so many. To send any sooner than December 1st was frowned upon, but from that day onward there would soon be so many she would have to hang string on the walls the hold them, which itself became a decoration.
From RTÉ Brainstorm, Do you know these 7 Irish Christmas traditions?
'Special' cards from beloved ones were reserved for the mantelpiece, while those from acquaintances were consigned to the string. It was considered a considerable faux pas to forget to send a Christmas cards to a usual recipient, one that could be rightified by sending a prompt ‘Happy New Year’ card (a rarer occurrence). However, in Ireland, the convention was that cards were not sent by people on the Christmas following a close family bereavement. Even children at school would send a card to every classmate and received one in turn so that added to the pile. After Christmas I would rescue the cards to upcycle into decorations for the following year.
The daily arrival of Christmas cards throughout Advent added to the growing excitement at the prospect of Christmas. I would always inspect the new arrivals when I got home from school, and remember vividly the types of cards, their variety and colour. Conventional designs at that stage included festive colours of red and green; holly with red berries was a good framing device; single red chested robins featured commonly. There were cards with gold and silver foil, cards with ribbon, cards with embossing, some were made from thin paper and some adorned with glitter.
There were cartoon reindeers, rosy faced Santas, painted romanticised Victorian scenes that evoked Charles Dickens’ snowcapped festive stories. Then there were the Irish cards with La Téne style knot work, modern abstract stained glass church windows. Cards that did not catch my imagination were the ‘serious’ ones, the monochrome craft woodcut printed cards which to a child looked so serious and boring and are probably the ones I would choose myself to send today.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Drivetime, Twisted Doodles cartoonist Maria Boyle on the ritual of sending and receiving Christmas cards
Christmas cards are an artistic tradition and many gave children a stealth introduction to different artistic styles and genres. In cards sent to a Catholic family there were a profusion of religious themes, many were prints of Renaissance art. A popular device by artists was to have, amid rich chiaroscuro, all the light from the scene subtly radiating from the baby Jesus in the manger. Favourites of mine were the painted winter scenes: frost and snow-covered landscapes so realistic you could imagine seeing your own breath. Even today a clear red coloured sky silhouetting dark conifers sets me thinking back to these mass printed scenes that heralded Christmas of my childhood.
The popularity of charity cards and the Irish ‘local’ card grew, our ‘Christmas Greetings from Grange’ was replied to with ‘Christmas Greetings from Enniskeane’, each card proudly showing a photograph of the main street of the village.
I’ve written about Irish Christmas traditions of the past, that were long held and lasted well into living memory, many of which have died out. Are Christmas cards, like other traditions in Ireland, at risk of going the same way? In our increasingly digital age, we connect more through screens, and the immediacy of electronic communication takes precedence over handwritten messages. The practice of sending Christmas cards may be thus perceived as unnecessary and even expensive given the rises in postage rates. Even though a survey by An Post a number of years ago suggested that younger people prefer physical Christmas cards, I still wonder if, into the future, Gen Z as adults will continue the tradition of sending and receiving them as enthusiastically as their forebears?
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
