Before there were postmen, how did people send Christmas greetings? The answer is that few people ever did. Of course letters, written notes, and little hand-drawn pictures had for a long time been exchanged at Christmas.

In the eighteenth century, children were made to copy out a carefully worded letter called a �Christmas piece� in their very best copperplate handwriting. The �piece� wished their parents the compliments of the season. The neatness and care taken by the children was meant to show how they were progressing.

Beautiful hand-illuminated texts had, for centuries, been prepared by monks to mark important religious festivals.

Well-to-do ladies with time to spare might paint little designs or pictures with a seasonal theme in watercolours to give to their acquaintances.

When the Penny Post was started in 1840, it became much easier for people to send greetings to their friends.

Then in 1843, a well known man-about-town, too busy for writing letters, asked an artist friend to design a card for him with a printed message which he could just sign. A thousand copies of the card were produced, and the very first Christmas card as we know it came into being.

The man was Henry Cole, director of London�s famous Victoria and Albert Museum.

But it was not until the late 1860�s that the practice of sending Christmas cards became really widespread. By 1870 the Christmas card boom had begun; the halfpenny post was introduced for cards in unsealed envelopes, and the cards themselves had become cheaper because of new methods of colour printing.

In fact Christmas cards became so successful that even in 1880 the Postmaster General was having to warn everyone to �post early for Christmas�.