100 Christmas Wishes: Vintage Holiday Cards from The New York Public Library
128
100 Christmas Wishes: Vintage Holiday Cards from The New York Public Library
128eBook
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Overview
A treasure trove of vintage Christmas cards, 100 Christmas Wishes is the perfect holiday treat from the New York Public Library.
Every year as the days grow shorter, amidst the holly, cookies, and carols there is another timeless holiday tradition—sending and receiving Christmas cards to and from those you love. 100 Christmas Wishes is a collection of vintage holiday cards, all from the archives of the New York Public Library. The Library houses one of the greatest collections of early Christmas postcards from around the world with thousands of cards depicting every imaginable holiday scene. Archivists selected one hundred of the best cards from the extensive collection to share in 100 Christmas Wishes. From the elegant, gilded Santa Clauses and statuesque angels, to yuletide still lifes, tumbling tots and puppies with bows round their necks, each card is a beautiful celebration of the holiday season. The book also includes six perforated postcards with reproductions of the designs so you too can share a vintage Christmas wish with friends and family on your list.
As Rosanne Cash, a patron and friend of the Library as well as a devoted fan of Christmas cards, says in her introduction “This collection of early Christmas postcards, housed for a century in the New York Public Library archives, distills those abiding wishes for the holidays from revelers from long ago and faraway, in a wish for peace, joy, magic, bounty, family, and for light to be shone ‘round the world at Christmas, past and future.’”
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250297419 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/16/2018 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 131 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
The New York Public Library is a free provider of education and information for the people of New York and beyond. With 92 locations—including research and branch libraries—throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, the Library offers free materials, computer access, classes, exhibitions, programming and more to everyone from toddlers to scholars, and has seen record numbers of attendance and circulation in recent years. The New York Public Library serves more than 18 million patrons who come through its doors annually and millions more around the globe who use its resources. To offer this wide array of free programming, The New York Public Library relies on both public and private funding. Learn more about how you can help support the library on their website.
Read an Excerpt
FOREWORD
These Christmas greetings from the vast collection of holiday cards in the New York Public Library postcard collection capture the abiding, universal impulse to connect with friends and loved ones at Christmas, but the whimsical, artistic, lush, humorous, and sober imagery from these century-old images is a unique window into the past. The cards are from 1887 to 1944, and come from a dozen countries. They represent not just the common instinct for Christmas conviviality, but the golden age of postcards themselves. In some ways they were the social media and email of the early twentieth century: brief messages, dashed off quickly, to acknowledge and maintain connection and affection.
The images on the cards represent the Christmas ideal of our collective imagination, an ideal that transcends time, country, and culture: happy children who long for magic, lighted trees and festive families, snow at dusk, and evergreens, sleigh rides, gifts, and bountiful feasts. These visions still dominate our conception of what Christmas means. We insist on joy, but if there is too much loss accumulated in our lives at the end of the year, we will settle for longing and a poignant remembrance of Christmas past.
We pray, we dance, we sing, we feast, we shine light into the darkest time of the year, we exchange gifts, we preserve the belief in magic for our children, we remember, and we hope for peace. We reveal our humanity and our dreams to each other at Christmas.
We are fortunate that the New York Public Library was prescient enough to begin collecting postcards, which most people thought disposable and unworthy of preservation, in 1915. The first picture postcard had appeared in the United States only twenty-two years previously, at the Chicago Columbian Exhibition of 1893. They were an instant success and demand for picture postcards was insatiable in the early part of the century. The holidays were the perfect opportunity to utilize the new form of greeting, and a quick and inexpensive way to send goodwill to friends and family both far and near.
This collection of early Christmas postcards, housed for over a century in the New York Public Library archives, distills those abiding wishes for the holidays from revelers from long ago and faraway, in a wish for peace, joy, magic, bounty, family, and for light to be shone 'round the world at Christmas, past and future.
As one card in the collection avows:
Once again 'tis Christmas time Happy bells are pealing, Bringing tidings old yet new, Bonds of friendship sealing.
May your own bonds of friendship be renewed this season, and may the happy bells of Christmas ring out from the past and echo into the future, and may these images remind us of our shared humanity at Christmastime and always.
— Rosanne Cash
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "100 Christmas Wishes"
by .
Copyright © 2018 The New York Public Library.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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Table of Contents
Title Page,
Foreword,
100 Christmas Wishes,
Notes on Origins,
About the Library,
Copyright,