The enduring allure of Florida's Christmas cards
CHRISTMAS, Fla. - Every December, families flock to a small town east of Orlando called Christmas to postmark their holiday cards from Christmas.
This custom of sending mass-produced Christmas cards started in 19th-Century England, and took a life of its own across the state of Florida in the 20th Century.
The tradition started with a British postal worker named Henry Cole. He had a backlog of mail and was too busy to reply to each letter as Victorian etiquette required.
He came up with the idea of a mass-produced card. And the first season featured a family toasting the season. Cole didn't realize how much a toast would offend those who did not approve of drinking.
"It was actually the temperance league that didn't care for that so much. They thought it was encouraging drinking. So the first Christmas card didn't get a highly favorable response. It took a few years, a couple of decades actually," said Heather Trubee Brown, curator of education at Tampa’s Henry Plant Museum.
By the start of the 20th Century, mass-produced cards took off from Great Britain to the United States, and Florida in particular.
"Florida for people who didn't live here, Florida was exotic. And with the tropical plants of oranges and poinsettias growing, it added lots of color to the landscape,” said Brown.
Tourists loved to send Florida cards to their freezing friends and loved ones around the world.
By the start of the 21st Century, card sales hit a hard slump as email took off, and then the Great Recession hit. But the analysts who projected the cards would go extinct appear to have misjudged millennials. As they celebrate milestones in their lives, they appear to be propping up the holiday card business.
Sales slumped to record lows five years ago, then stabilized, then started ticking up.
“There's nothing quite like holding an actual card in your hand and knowing that it came from someone who cared,” added Josh Frank, manager of Robert’s Christmas Wonderland in Clearwater.