The Evolution of Christmas Seals

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Letter-writing is becoming a lost art! That’s why, yesterday, we challenged you to write a letter of your own to someone. Getting a letter is exciting. Getting a pile of junk mail – not so much. But even in today’s era of electronic and instant communications, direct mail for businesses and fundraisers is still a really big thing! Here’s a look at the start of one of those fundraising traditions: Christmas seals.

“This is a special kind of Christmas – the first in seven years without the darkness of war.  At last we are free to celebrate the season in the old-time way.  Our loved ones are home.  The candles will gleam brighter now, the balsam boughs will breathe a more pungent fragrance, and more sweetly than ever will carols ring…as if in answer to a world’s prayers for peace.”

December 21, 1945: The Creston Review’s Christmas edition carries this ad, and many others in a similar vein, from local merchants and businesses.  They reflect what was no doubt widespread relief that the Second World War had at last come to a close.  These ads offer sincere congratulations to soldiers’ families reunited for the first time in years, and heartfelt sympathies to those who had lost loved ones in the conflict.

The local train station and post office were hectically busy by the first week in December with the Christmas rush. All the general and hardware stores published lists of gift suggestions – Sinclair’s hardware even suggested a gift certificate for “a beautiful new Frigidaire” as a “glorious family gift.”  Specials on Christmas goodies were announced by every grocery store in the Valley.  The schools and churches were busy planning concerts and children’s Christmas trees; the “Local and Personal” columns were full of announcements of who was home for the holidays and who was away visiting friends and family elsewhere.

Tucked in amongst all these cheerful messages were a couple of reminders that, while the war might be over, there were still battles to be fought – battles of a different kind.

One editorial begins, “Tuberculosis killed nearly as many Canadians during the war years as the war did. During the war 38,000 of Canada’s fighting men and women died, and in the same period 36,000 others lost their lives and 90,000 more were stricken by tuberculosis. Wars we know are man-made, and our fervent prayer is that man will never make another, but TB is germ-made and we know from our medical progress that it can be beaten.”

It’s the start of an appeal to the public to buy Christmas seals – those little stickers sent out by what we now call the Canadian Lung Association, but which in 1945 was the Tuberculosis Society. Another article in the same paper gave a little more history on the Christmas seals, which a quick search on Google rounded out:

The first Christmas seals were used in Denmark in 1903, where Einar Hoebell, working in a post office, came up with the idea of selling special stamps as a way to raise funds for children’s hospitals.  The first year’s campaign saw four million of them sold, and by the end of the second year, enough money had been raised to build two children’s hospitals.

Christmas seal campaigns began in the US in 1907, and in Canada the following year.  They were made the official public fundraiser for TB research and treatment in 1927.  At first they were sold in post offices for a penny apiece, but “seal letters,” to quote the Review, were being mailed out to homes by 1945, and “the BC Tuberculosis Society are hoping once more than the ‘messengers’ will come home.” 

Since then, many other organisations have followed the Tuberculosis Society’s lead, and I know I’m not the only one who gets a little frustrated at the deluge of charitable appeals that arrives in my mail box at this time of year. I do support a few; most I have to ignore.  But they are all a reminder that there are still battles to be fought.  So whether you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Saturnalia: a gift to a local or national charity might be one of the best ways “to celebrate the season in the old-time way.”

Originally published December 2009