Yahoo News First ever printed Christmas card up for sale nearly 200 years after it sparked scandal
Victorian teetotalers were scandalised by the card
(AP)The first commercially printed Christmas card is up for sale almost two centuries after it sparked a festive scandal.
The Victorian era-scene, produced in 1843, was emblazoned with the traditional wishes of a “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you”.
But some 19th Century viewers were far from happy at the imagery which depicted an English family toasting glasses of red wine as a little girl sips from a woman’s cup.
A leading group of puritanicals kicked up such a fuss over the picture that it took three years before another Christmas card was produced.
It is now up for sale online through a US consortium of dealers specialising in rare books and manuscripts.
Justin Schiller, a member of the cohort selling the card, explained critics’ reaction at the time.
He said: "They were quite distressed that in this 'scandalous' picture they had children toasting with a glass of wine along with the adults. They had a campaign to censor and suppress it."
Marvin Getman, a Boston-based dealer who runs the consortium, said the hand-coloured lithograph is believed to have been a salesperson's sample.
Only 1,000 copies were printed and sold for a shilling apiece, and experts believe fewer than 30 have survived, he said.
The card was designed by painter and illustrator John Callcott Horsley at the suggestion of Sir Henry Cole, a British civil servant and inventor who founded London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.
Sir Henry is widely credited with starting the tradition of sending holiday cards, which has grown into a multimillion-pound industry.
The 1843 card is believed to have gone on sale the same week that Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol was first published.
Christie's auction house in London is also selling one of the rare cards and says it expects the item to fetch between £5,000 and £8,000.
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