What is the first known historical example of a birthday card?
History of the Greeting Card The custom of sending greeting cards can be traced back to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year, and to the early Egyptians, who conveyed their greetings on papyrus scrolls. By the early 1400s, handmade paper greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. http://www.greetingcard.org/thegreetingcard_history.html Sending greeting cards to friends and family is a tradition that goes back about 200 years. They were mostly sent by the elite and wealthy in the early to mid 1800’s. Most of the early greeting cards were hand delivered and many were quite expensive, but they soon gained mass popularity with the introduction of the world’s first postage stamp issued in 1840 and a few ambitious printer’s and manufacturer’s perfecting printing methods, hiring artists and designed both elaborate expensive cards as well as simple affordable ones by the 1850’s.
