The modern custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back through the centuries to the Chinese who celebrated the advent of the New Year with messages of good will and good cheer. In more recent times, the Valentine is considered to be the original ancestor of today’s greeting cards. The first known published Christmas card appeared in London in 1843, although the Germans printed New Year’s greetings from woodcuts as early as the year 1400.

Today, over 7 billion greeting cards for all occasions are purchased annually in the United States which clearly indicates the important role that the greeting card plays in American life today.

One person is primarily credited with the start of the greeting card industry in America. Louis Prang was a German immigrant who settled in Boston and founded a small lithographic business there in 1856. Within ten years, he had perfected the lithographic process of color printing to a point where his reproductions of great paintings surpassed those of other graphic arts craftsmen in both Great Britain and the United States. In the early 1870s he began the publication of deluxe editions of Christmas cards which found a ready market in England. In 1875, Prang introduced the first complete line of Christmas cards to the American public.