Santa in a Rocket: Vintage Polish Christmas Cards
These Christmas cards of the past were more than just a way to send greetings to loved ones scattered around Poland or the world in the pre-internet era. They also were accessible, mass-produced works of modern design, training grounds for formal experimentation, and even tools of propaganda and political struggle.
Santa behind the kiosk counter
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Józef Wilczyński, 'Wesołych Świąt!', Postcard, 1938, photo: National Library Polona
The very word ‘postcard’ did not have a proper Polish equivalent for several decades after it was invented and disseminated in Europe. This did not change until 1900, when the editors of the Dictionary of the Polish Language decided to hold a competition for the Polish name of what was born in Britain as a ‘postcard’. The winner – under the pseudonym ‘Maria of R.’ – turned out to be Henryk Sienkiewicz, whose word ‘pocztówka’ beat such neologisms as ‘listówka’ (the combinations of the Polish words for ‘letter’ and ‘postcard’) or... ‘pisanka’ (which means both an Easter egg and calligraphic script in Polish).
The golden era of the postcard – both in terms of printed runs and, above all, in terms of artistic quality and variety – was during the political thaw at the end of the 1950s and the following two decades. As many as a thousand different designs from this period have been sorted and discussed by Jacek Friedrich in the book Wesołych Świąt! (Merry Christmas!), accompanying the exhibition at the Gdynia City Museum, presented at the turn of 2018 and 2019.
Initially, Christmas postcards were issued by Cepelia and several leading publishing houses, including Czytelnik, but over time Ruch became the undisputed king of the industry. This was even humorously reflected in the cards themselves – in one of Maria Heidrich's designs, Santa Claus himself was sitting behind the counter of a Ruch kiosk. The scale of production at that time can be seen in press reports. In 1966, Przekrój informed:
16 million new postcards and cards for Christmas and New Year wishes were issued by the Publishing Office ‘Ruch’. 27 well-known artists prepared 270 postcard designs. Cheerful and festive, modern, and conventional – everything under the sun. We will all have something to write wishes on.
Peasants, uhlans, and nurses
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Włodzimierz Przerwa-Tetmajer, 'The future found the Child in a manger ... Merry Christmas', 1931, photo: National Library Polona
Though their popularity reached its peak in the 1950s, Christmas cards were already popular in the interwar period. At that time, postcards were largely based on photographs, either black and white or coloured. In time, these photographic images would be superseded by illustrations – no wonder, considering how overdone and clichéd most of those photographs were, depicting gaudy couples next to decorated Christmas trees or children in angel costumes.
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'Wesołych Świąt ...', 1937, photo: National Library Polona
The illustrations of that time were presented in a much more interesting way. In them, we see connections not only with the press and advertising illustrations of that period, but also with painting. One of the postcards issued in Kraków in 1931 features a motif by Włodzimierz Tetmajer (who had passed away about a decade earlier), a Young Poland painter enamoured with peasant themes, who also was known as the inspiration for the character Gospodarz (meaning ‘host’) in Stanisław Wyspiański's famous drama The Wedding. In Tetmajer’s motif, the Christmas theme is both realistic and almost mystical. The scene, a meticulously realist depiction, takes place inside a peasant hut densely packed with people. They gather around Mary and Jesus, who illuminate the dark room with a supernatural glow – a representation borrowed from the painting of Our Lady of Częstochowa.
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Pre-war Christmas postcard, designed by Zofia Plewińska, photo: Krystyna Bartosik Collection / East News
Christmas traditions could also be combined with military motifs. One of the postcards published in Warsaw in 1937 and designed by an unknown author features a scene with a soldier at the door of a country cottage, as if taken straight from Maksymilian Gierymski's paintings depicting scenes from the January Uprising. The postcard differs only in that it features a Christmas tree visible through the window. The postcards issued during the Polish-Russian War of 1920 have a distinct patriotic-agitational flavour. On one of the cards designed by Zofia Plewińska-Smidowiczowa, there are tin soldiers resting under a Christmas tree, a rocking horse is being embraced by a girl wearing a peaked cap on her head, while her companion is wearing a nurse's armband and playing with a doll, dressing it with bandages.
The six-year Christmas plan
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Hey, a Christmas carol to the Odra and Nysa, where our soldier is guarding the border, postcard, Lower Silesian Labor Cooperative 'Fototechnika', 1948, photo: National Library Polona
After the Second World War, both the art on the Christmas cards and their political meaning started evolving. Instead of families around a lavishly decorated Christmas tree at home, there is a lone soldier at his post, sitting at a table decorated with a modest Christmas wreath and a single candle. Instead of unwrapping presents from Santa Claus, he stands vigil in defence of one great gift from the participants of the Yalta Conference in the form of the Western Territories. ‘Hey, a Christmas carol reaching the Oder and Neisse, where our soldier guards the border’, is written on the back of the card.
During the Stalinist period, attempts were made to strip Christmas postcards of their religious connotations. Sometimes all Christmas related symbolism was removed, replaced by white doves, but more often the traditional Christmas tree took on a meaning similar to the one of the doves of peace. The Christmas tree on cards designed by Teodor Klonowski or Zbigniew Rychlicki, formally maintained in the spirit of slightly Disney-like socialist realism, was placed in locations emphasising the achievements in building the new Poland – in the middle of the shiny new Constitution Square or the reconstructed Old Town in Warsaw. Christmas trees even appeared against the background of fuming factory chimneys. On its branches, in addition to candles and decorative garlands, hung baubles in the shape of the number 6, symbolising the Six-Year Plan.
A thaw in Bethlehem
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'Wesołych Świąt', a postcard with highlanders celebrating Christmas, 1966, photo: FoKa / Forum
On the wave of the thaw, a period of relative political liberalization in the mid-1950s, religious themes made a great comeback. For a decade, until the exacerbation of the cold war between the communist regime and the Church in the mid-1960s, the scene of the manger in Bethlehem or the figures of the three wise men from the East remained frequent heroes of Christmas postcards. They often revealed remarkable aspects, far from kitschy devotion.
In the cards designed by Olga Siemaszko, the birth in the stable receives a modern, geometrised setting. References stemming from historical conventions also are interesting, especially those appearing in the figures of angels. On the cards designed by Maria Uszacka, they incorporate forms taken from Byzantine icons, while in Maria Heidrich's version, modern, linear forms intertwine organically with the conventions of Romanesque wall painting.
A Folkloric and Sarmatian Christmas
Over the following decades, graphic artists' fondness for folk references did not diminish, a trend the communist party also looked favourably upon. Sometimes, as in the case of cards designed by Krystyna Tarkowska, illustrations came close to a precise ethnographic reconstruction of carol singing costumes. Above all, however, folk costumes created an opportunity for formal games and for imitating folk art techniques in the illustrations. Zbigniew Kaja offered variations on classic wycinanki (paper cut-outs), and Adam Kilian produced designs inspired by glass painting and woodcuts.
The fascination with folk art inherited from the interwar period also took on forms close to those of interwar art, as in the cards designed by Maria Orłowska-Gabryś. Orłowska-Gabryś was a specialist in historical stylisation, placing Christmas scenes in real life medieval or Sarmatian courts. Equally interesting historical references can be found in the Christmas works of one of the greats of Polish illustration, Jan Marcin Szancer, who depicted the Polish legionaries from Napoleon's army following the star of Bethlehem and, in another work, dressed one of the three wise men from the East in traditional Polish hussar armour.
‘I have made a career out of nostalgia’, said Antoni Uniechowski, a cartoonist specialising in historical scenes from many different eras. In the case of his Christmas postcards, nostalgia for the Interwar Poland comes to the fore. Although the scenes themselves resemble simple motifs from photographic cards of the period – family gatherings around a Christmas tree – the artist's sketchy, vibrant line gives them lightness and elegance.
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View from the 'Wesołych Świąt' exhibition, 2019, Gdynia City Museum, photo: Bogna Kociumbas / MMG
Santa’s relay race
One of the most common heroes of Christmas cards is, of course, Santa Claus. When it came to cards featuring Santa Claus, designers were particularly imaginative – it is Santa who feeds forest animals, helps a family carry a Christmas tree into a flat, wanders around a neon-lit city at night, pops into a pub, and even seduces young girls. He also seems to be a fan of motorisation, and basically all means of transport, as he not only moves around in a classic reindeer-drawn sleigh, but also on a scooter, in an old-fashioned limousine, a racing car, a balloon, a plane and a rocket. In one rendering, Santa circumnavigated the the world like Aladdin on a flying carpet; in another, he entered the city like Hannibal's army – on the back of an elephant.
All this merry activity was possible thanks to the transformation of the figure of the bishop with a pastoral in his hand and a mitre on his head into a globalised figure of a jolly fat man in a red and white costume, which was popularised in Coca-Cola advertisements as early as in the 1930s. Sometimes in the Polish version, Santa holds one last attribute of the traditional bishop-like solemnity – a pastoral. The reconciliation of these two images also took place more literally. On Wiesława Grosset's postcard, the two Santas – the bishop and the pop-culture symbol in the red costume – exchange a friendly handshake.
Polish Christmas cards also feature Gwiazdor from Greater Poland, who delivers presents to local children on Christmas Eve, as well as Ded Moroz (Grandfather Frost), imported from the Soviet Union, who, like a Soviet spy, sometimes seems to impersonate a representative of rotten imperialism and wears a costume eerily similar to that of his Western rival. On this Cold War front, the eastern side had to lay down its arms quickly – during the thaw, Ded Moroz was practically replaced by the rival American Santa Claus.
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Underground Christmas card of 'Solidarity', photo: 'Kwadrat' Underground Publishing House - 'Solidarność' Toruń / https://kw.pl.eu.org
Miłosz and Popiełuszko welcome the newborn
The designs issued by Solidarity in the 1980s marked a special chapter in the history of Christmas cards. Printed in black and white, with simple typography and crude illustrations, they reflect the style typical of underground press; and like postcards from 1920-1921 and the immediate post-war period, they do not shy away from explicit political references, especially during the period of Martial Law.
These cards depict Jesus born behind prison bars and a crow dressed in the gear of the infamous ZOMO police perched on a Christmas tree decorated with firearm ammunition and barbed wire. Apart from simple satirical illustrations, the Solidarity projects also included collages, usually based on typically devotional scenes from the stable in Bethlehem, joined by contemporary guests from the political opposition – from the priest Jerzy Popiełuszko and Primate Wyszyński to poet Czesław Miłosz.
Originally written in Polish, translated by AD, Nov 2021
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