Tag: Christmas

America’s First Christmas Cards (episode 316)

Have you ever wondered where the tradition of sending Christmas cards every year came from?  While the first Christmas cards appeared in Britain back in the 1840s, it was a German immigrant named Louis Prang who made them popular in the United States and around the world.  Using a revolutionary new color printing technique that he called chromolithography, Prang’s Roxbury factory made the most popular greeting cards in the country from the 1870s until the turn of the century. 


Continue reading America’s First Christmas Cards (episode 316)

The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)

The Puritan dissenters who founded the town of Boston are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might think that Christmas in Puritan Boston would be a big deal.  You’d be wrong though.  Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more.  What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas?  What were the practices of misrule, mummery, and wassailing with which Christmas was celebrated in the 17th century?  And why did the Puritans literally erase Christmas from their calendars?   


Continue reading The Original War on Christmas (episode 212)