Christmas Cards were introduced in 1843 (the same year A CHRISTMAS CAROL was first published) by Sir Henry Cole, an English
businessman and patron of art. The card was designed by John Calcott Horsley, and helped popularize the expression "Merry
Christmas". Cole printed a thousand cards and sold them as a means to simplify the sending of Christmas greetings. Postage
for the cards was one penny in the 1840s. Within a few years after the introduction of the halfpenny rate for mailing cards
in the 1870s, the British Post Office was flooded with annual card mailings. Christmas cards in the United States were first
produced for businesses to send to their customers as a form of advertising.
Christmas Island was named on December 25, 1643 by the British East India Company captain who arrived there on that
Christmas. The island is a self-governing Territory of Australia located 1,466 miles northeast of Perth in the Indian Ocean.
Postage stamps have been issued since 1958.
The first Christmas stamp was printed by the Canadian post office in 1898, but another national Christmas stamp wasn't
produced until Austria issued two in 1937. The practice of regularly issuing Christmas stamps was begun in Australia and a
few other countries in the 1950s. The United States began the practice in the 1960s, also issuing stamps commemorating
Hanukkah, Eid and Kwanzaa.
The first Christmas Seal (which has no postage value) was issued in Denmark at the turn of the 20th century to raise money
for tuberculosis. Christmas seals in the United States raise money for the American Lung Association. (Although tuberculosis
is not common in the United States, drug-resistant strains have emerged. Tuberculosis remains one of the most common deadly
infectious diseases in the world, with 1.7 million deaths in 2004.)
El Niño (Spanish for "the small boy", ie, the Christ child) was originally a term used by peoples of the west coast of South
America to describe the warming ocean countercurrent which occurs annually during the Christmas season. But every 3 to 7
years the effect is abnormally strong and is associated with dramatic climactic effects all over the world, including drought
in some areas, flooding in other areas and unusually warm or cold winter temperatures. The most severe El Niño on record was
in 1982-1983, but the phenomenon has not been studied by scientists for much longer than fifty years.
St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals and founder of the Franciscan Order (clerics for the masses rather than
for the aristocrats), is said to have been the first to depict a Nativity Scene (creche, crèche) in Greccio, Italy, around
1223 AD — using life-size wooden figures of Mary, Joseph, Jesus and the shepherds. The word "creche" comes from the French
word for "manger", which in turn comes from the Italian word "Greccio", the name of the town having the first nativity manger
scene.
The Greek transliteration of the word Christ is Xristos, the first letter which is the Greek letter "chi". The shortening of
Christmas to Xmas by educated persons who knew Greek has been common since the sixteenth century, with the "X" often
symbolizing a cross. "Xmas" was an ecclesiastical abbreviation used by churchmen in tables & charts. More recently the use of
"X" has been associated with irreverent commercialism, leading to the saying "Put the 'Christ' back into Xmas". The American
profanity "Jesus H. Christ", may come from the second letter of "chi" ("Christos" for "Xristos"), and has been in the use in
the United States at least since 1850.
