Great Selection of Birthday Cards
No one knows who sent the first birthday card, but it’s widely believed that they were probably first sent in Victorian times. This isn’t to say that greeting cards weren’t around before then, in fact greeting cards themselves date back to both the Ancient Chinese and Ancient Egyptian cultures, but birthdays weren’t really celebrated back then.
The general consensus of the Victorian era is because of events that were happening at the time – the first commercial Christmas card was sent and the first postage stamp was ‘born’ (the Penny Black).
Within the upper classes of Victorian society it was common practice to take your card with you when calling on someone – your card would be placed on a tray while the butler went to see if the Master or Mistress was receiving visitors at the time (probably the origin of today’s business cards).
The usual custom (within the upper and middle classes) was to visit someone on their birthday and if you couldn’t attend for some reason you sent your apologies, given the use of calling cards it wouldn’t seem too far a leap to suppose that a calling card was included with the letter of apology for non-attendance.
I think that the combination of all of these factors would lead to the natural progression of birthday cards being sent. The 1850s also saw a more economical form of printing become available which would pave the way for commercial greeting card companies which were established during the 1860s and included names such as Marcus Ward & Co as well as Charles Bennett.
Today 60% of all greeting cards sent are birthday cards and isn’t it nice to receive a special birthday card in the mail? There are a huge number of birthday e-cards being sent which are increasing every year, but personally I love receiving a ‘real’ card over an e-card.
If you’re like me and like to send (and receive) ‘real’ birthday cards then I hope you’ll check out our range of birthday cards here. This site is constantly growing so if you don’t see a ‘perfect’ card today, please bookmark the site and visit again.
Batman Birthday Cards
Bird Birthday Cards
Flower Birthday Cards
Gothic Birthday Cards
Pug Birthday Cards
Rose Birthday Cards
Also feel free to check out even more cards on my Pinterest board –
Follow Louanne Cox’s board Birthday Cards on Pinterest.
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