In its infancy and adolescence, the period from about 1840 through the 1880s, the greetings card industry in Britain and America clearly differentiated between the two holidays of the “holiday season” and produced distinct Christmas and New Year’s Day cards rather than the combined Seasons’ Greetings and Happy Holidays cards of today. Below are examples of New Year’s Day cards from the 1870s and 1880s, from the manuscript collection s of the Lilly Library of Indiana University. Most are British, with the exception of the first calendar card, which was published by Louis Prang & Company of Boston in 1883.
