THE Christmas card is 161 years old and at our house, at least, we are still receiving them for people who lived here when Victoria was on the throne.

The card was invented by Sir Henry Cole who claimed he was too busy founding the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and organising the 1851 Great Exhibition to have time to handwrite Christmas greetings to his friends and relations.

So he asked an artist friend, John Calcott Horsley, to come up with something he could quickly sign.

For Christmas 1843, Horsley designed a card with three pictures on it. In the middle was a jolly family, all big smiles as they sipped festive wine. Either side of them was a family of paupers being fed and clothed. Beneath them was the legend: "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."

Horsley printed 1,000 sepia cards - some were hand-painted - and any that Sir Henry didn't use were sold for one shilling.

Because of the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840, and the development of colour printing techniques, the Christmas card quickly caught on. Horsley's original, though, was rapidly withdrawn from sale because the children in the jolly family could be seen sipping wine with the adults. This outraged the temperance movement.

Therefore, Horsley's first card is a collector's item. Only a dozen or so survive, and prices range from £6,000 unsigned to £22,500 for one that Sir Henry found the time to scrawl his name upon.

It was ironic, though, that Horsley's card should have become embroiled in scandal for, in later life, he found scandal in other people's work. He became the leading prude of his day. He took against still life sessions and campaigned vigorously against artworks which featured naked human forms.

Because of this, he was disparagingly nicknamed "Clothes Horsley".

It is not ironic, though, that Clothes Horsley should have designed the first Christmas card for a man who was essentially too lazy to send personal greetings to his closest acquaintances. Because, 161 years on, that is still the case.

We've lived in our house for ten years. The people we bought it from lived here for five or six. But every year we receive Christmas cards addressed to the people that they bought the house from.

How close can these people be? They are writing to this chap - sending best wishes "from all the tribe" - in the belief that he is still a solicitor in Darlington.

He was a solicitor in Darlington 17 years ago. But now he lives in a croft on the Isle of Skye. You would have thought, if you were friendly enough to be on someone's Christmas card list, that you might once over the course of 17-plus years have discussed such a fundamental life change.

ALL but one of the stories surrounding the 1914 Bombardment of the North-East coast by German battleships - the 90th anniversary of the killing of 134 coastal civilians was on Thursday - involved spilled blood and guts and death.

The one, as an up-lifting footnote, was in Whitby. During 11 minutes the German ships rained down 150 shells. The explosions were thunderous and the fear of invasion was so real that a Mrs Griffin prematurely gave birth. When the dust settled and the Germans failed to land on the beach, she calmly called her newborn George Shrapnel Griffin.