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The origin of congratulating Christmas with allegorical cards during the Christmas holidays is attributed by some to Sir Henry Cole, director of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London who, in 1843, commissioned the painter John Calcott Horsley to draw him a triptych with Christmas scenes.
In the central part, Calcott drew a scene of a family sitting at the table and toasting, which read the phrase: “With wishes of happiness.” The sides of the triptych were intended for the charity that we should have with our neighbors.
One depicted a half-naked beggar being offered a piece of clothing; in the other, a hungry beggar receiving a plate of food (one represented the charitable act of clothing the naked and the other that of feeding the hungry).
Sir Henry subsequently had a thousand cards printed to send to relatives and friends. And so that the new way of celebrating Christmas would not be so expensive, he sold the remaining ones for the price of one shilling.
Other scholars give the origin to Thomas Shorrock, of Leith (Scotland), who in the 1840s, on the occasion of the arrival of the New Year, sent a greeting, what he called “a guide to the new year.”
The cards were not well regarded by some of the people who received them, as they were highly criticized. It represented the image of a man with a hat and a bottle of drink in his hand and with features of having drunk a lot and with the legend “A Guide new year tae ye” (A new year guide for you). He was accused of encouraging a drinking habit.
In the middle of the 20th century, in Spain there were two different ways to celebrate Christmas:
