Christmas cards
by Cris G. Sienes
of Sun.Star Davao
Sending Christmas cards to friends and loved ones has already become a Yuletide exigency. For the “immortal trifle,” as the Christmas card has come to be known, has so endeared itself to well-wishers that no Christmas is complete without it.
People differ in the way they treat Christmas cards they receive. Some keep them but later throw them away. Others use them to decorate their Christmas trees or their homes. Still others treasure them as they would valuable items. The late Queen Mary of England so treasured her Christmas cards that she had a collection of 18 albums.
The first Christmas card was said to have been engraved in the year 1842 by a 16-year-old artist in London, William Maw Egley. By the 1860s the practice of sending Christmas cards and other greeting cards flourished in England.
Boston lithographer Louis Prang introduced equally elegant Christmas cards to America in 1875. By the 1900s more than 300 US printers had produced millions of greeting cards of all kinds worth more than $200 million a year. Half of them were Christmas cards.
Traditional designs like ice and snow of the European landscape in winter continued to adorn Christmas cards. Even today, the theme has been retained in Christmas cards in Southeast Asia, as in the Philippines.
Some Filipino craftsmen, though, started veering away from the traditional ice and snow designs. As cited by Philippine Star columnist Alejandro Roces, a Filipino Christmas card combined the Filipino flag with the Nativity scene in Bethlehem. The figure of Christ was inserted in the sun, while the three kings were superimposed with the three stars representing Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.
This should really be the case, particularly since we have no winter in the country. We should use our native cultural designs, like a wooden cart drawn by a carabao instead of Santa Claus’ sleigh and reindeers. We should be true to our own culture. |
