Louis Prang, a Bavarian-born lithographer who immigrated to America in 1850, is known as the 'Father of the American Christmas Card.' He perfected chromolithography—a technique for reproducing color oil paintings—and began mass-producing Christmas cards in 1875. His cards featured elaborate designs of flowers, children, and winter scenes, and became so popular that by the 1880s, he was printing five million cards per year.
The German Immigrant Who Invented American Christmas Cards
Before Louis Prang arrived on the scene, Americans didn't really send Christmas cards. The tradition existed in Britain since 1843, but across the Atlantic, the holiday greeting was mostly verbal or, at best, a handwritten note. Then came a perfectionist German immigrant with a printing press and a vision.
From Bavaria to Boston
Louis Prang fled political unrest in Germany in 1850, eventually settling in Boston. He was already a skilled printer, but he became obsessed with a particular challenge: reproducing the rich colors of oil paintings on paper.
His solution was chromolithography—a painstaking process that layered multiple colors from separate stones to create vibrant, realistic images. While he didn't invent the technique, Prang perfected it to an unprecedented degree, sometimes using over 20 separate color applications for a single print.
The Christmas Card Revolution
In 1875, Prang began applying his chromolithographic mastery to Christmas cards. The results were stunning:
- Elaborate floral designs that looked almost three-dimensional
- Sentimental scenes of children, winter landscapes, and birds
- Rich, saturated colors that no competitor could match
- Silk fringe borders on premium editions
Americans had never seen anything like them. Within a decade, Prang's company was producing five million Christmas cards annually.
The Art Contest That Changed Everything
Prang didn't just sell cards—he elevated them. Starting in 1880, he sponsored annual design competitions with prizes up to $2,000 (roughly $60,000 today). Major artists competed, and the winning designs became coveted collectors' items.
This wasn't just marketing genius. Prang genuinely believed in democratizing art. His affordable chromolithographs brought fine art reproductions into working-class homes for the first time.
The Cheap Imitation Problem
By the 1890s, Prang's success had attracted imitators—particularly German printers who undercut his prices with inferior quality. Frustrated that the market he'd created was being flooded with cheap knockoffs, Prang stopped producing Christmas cards around 1890.
He pivoted to art education materials, creating watercolor sets and instruction books that would influence American art education for decades. But his legacy was already secure.
The tradition he'd planted had taken root. Today, Americans send approximately 1.3 billion Christmas cards annually—all tracing back to a Bavarian immigrant who refused to compromise on color.