Did you know that the first commercially produced Christmas cards were sent in the UK in the 1840s?

We often think of the Victorians as very religious, proper and prudish, but many of the cards they designed and sent to each other paint a very different picture. Far from the traditional wintery scenes or festivities we might expect to see. Many of the cards seem quite unseasonal and peculiar to us today, often humorous and almost never with manger scenes, shepherds or angels. Flowers, animals, and people dressed in fashionable Victorian outfits were much more common. The cards show us the Victorians were not very different from us, using cards to celebrate and commemorate events, reinforce family ties, convey emotions and ‘make memories’.

Come and see some of these surprising cards from the Seddon Collection of Victorian and Edwardian Greetings Cards from Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections Museum, which holds over 32,500 cards from the 1840s to the 1920s.

From Monday 19 December to Thursday 23 December 2-4pm, card making materials will be available to make your own cards in the Portico Library space.

This is part of the project “Celebrations: Victorian and Edwardian Greeting Cards” with Manchester Metropolitan University’s Special Collections Museum and the Long Nineteenth Century Network, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project aims to make the Seddon Collection and its catalogue more accessible to all by engaging different communities in collections-based research.

To find out more visit:

www.mmu.ac.uk/special-collections-museum

The Long Nineteenth-Century Network (wordpress.com)

Research theme: The Long Nineteenth-Century Network | MMU

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• Tagged Victorian, Christmas, craft workshop, family