The concept itself was neither novel nor ground-breaking. Printed Valentine's Day cards were already well-liked at the time in the UK. The idea of selling such cards for Christmas there was initially met with skepticism because it was believed that they would not sell well, but soon enough, thanks to new, more affordable printing techniques and lower postage costs as a result of an increase in rail services, Christmas cards there began to be in greater demand.

Cards made in Germany, where printing technology was evolving more quickly and making them higher quality and less expensive, quickly gained popularity in England. Additionally, German holiday customs like Christmas trees and calendars started to spread in England about the same time, courtesy to Queen Victoria's German husband Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The first commercial batch of Christmas cards was printed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1874. Millions of copies were printed in just a few years at the Boston printing facility headed by a German named Louis Prang who employed over two dozen distinct colors in his printing.

The practice of sending Christmas cards is older, but they weren't printed until the middle of the fourteenth century, when they were typically sold in monasteries. They portrayed Mary as being on a ship, accompanied by angels. The ship represented happy news. Before 1900, the majority of Christmas cards manufactured in Germany were intended for export. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, Germans themselves liked to send handwritten greeting cards with poems or well wishes on paper adorned with seasonal decorations.