Christmas Seals

One Hundred Years 1907-2007

www.christmasseals.org

The Story of Christmas Seals®

In 1871 a young doctor name Edward Livingston Trudeau was diagnosed as having TB. He threw aside all of his plans and decided to spend his remaining time in the serenity of a cottage in northern New York State.

The quiet, peaceful surroundings in the mountains were conducive to long hours of rest. Gradually as Dr. Trudeau began feeling better, he became convinced that TB could be cured with proper bed rest, good nourishment, fresh air, and lots of sunshine.

In 1884, the now fully recovered doctor opened the first TB hospital, or sanatorium, in the United States. Although very modest, this one-room red cottage on the shore of Saranac Lake, New York, with room for only two patients at a time, quickly became world famous as one patient after another recovered.

Soon other buildings joined the "Little Red" cottage. Around the world other sanatoriums came into being. But despite the growing belief that the "rest cure" was at least a partial answer to their TB scourge, there were far many more stricken with the disease than there were funds to provide them with adequate facilities and care.

The Year Was 1907

By 1907, TB sanatoriums were springing up around the country but most were makeshift and could only care for a few patients at a time. One of them, a small shack on the banks of the Brandywine River in Delaware, was in desperate financial straits. Efforts to raise money had failed because much of the public was unaware that TB patients were being helped by such fresh-air hospitals. The hospital on the Brandywine was about to close its doors forever unless $300 could be found to keep it going. through the winter.

Enter Emily Bissell

Joseph Wales, one of the doctors serving the Brandywine hospital thought his cousin Emily Bissell might find the needed money. She was active in the American Red Cross in Wilmington and had lots of fund-raising experience. Emily learned about a Danish man who sold seals during the Christmas season to raise funds for fighting TB in Denmark.

"Well, Emily," he wrote to her, "see what you can do. We're down to our last dollar. Unless $300 can be raised somehow, the poor patients will have to be sent home to die...and perhaps to spread the disease to other people. I hope you'll find a way. You've got to help us."

Emily was anxious to help, but convincing others to contribute wasn't going to be easy. So many people felt that TB was a death sentence and a hopeless cause. Then she remembered a magazine article she had read about how money for the care of needy children with TB was successfully raised in Denmark, far across the ocean.

The article Emily read was written by a famous journalist and social worker of Danish-American birth, Jacob Riis. Six of Jacob's brothers had died from TB, so when he learned that his native country had come up with a way to raise money to fight the disease, Riis had a personal reason to suggest that the method be tried in America. This method was the sale, during the Christmas season, of small seals to raise funds for fighting TB. Here is how this idea came to be....

A postal clerk, Einar Holboell, was concerned about the lack of care available for the many children ill with TB. He had noticed that in the weeks before Christmas, the post office was filled with lots of holiday mail. The thought struck him: Here was a means for financing the construction of TB hospitals where children could be taken care of properly.

Suppose Denmark issued a special Christmas seal for letters and packages, he thought. While the holiday spirit was high, people just might buy them to help bring in money to help the sick children.

His boss, the postmaster, also thought this was a good idea, as long as the seals were not used as postage. Even the King of Denmark expressed his approval by providing royal patronage. The first seal, bearing a picture of the Queen and the Danish word for Merry Christmas, was issued in 1904 and sold in post offices throughout the country. Over 4 million were sold the first year at a half-penny apiece--a great success. The proceeds from the first two campaigns were enough, in fact, to finance the construction of two children's TB hospitals.

The First Christmas Seal 

Emily thought the idea of seals was terrific. "Why not create one to raise money for the shack?" she asked herself. She sat down and sketched a design -- a red cross centered in a half-wreath of holly above the words "Merry Christmas." Her associates at the Delaware Red Cross refused to pay for putting out the seals but the national organization gave its permission to use its red cross symbol on the Christmas Seals®.

Emily was able to borrow $40 from friends and had get 50,000 Christmas Seals printed seals printed on credit. The only problem that remained was getting permission to sell the seals in the Wilmington, Delaware post office. At first, the local postmaster was hesitant, thinking the idea absurd. Since the Christmas Seal was not a government issue, it could not be sold along with other stamps in the post office. The postmaster relented somewhat, however, and gave permission for the seals to be sold at a stand in the post office lobby. The seals were placed in small envelopes carrying the following word in red: 25 Christmas Stamps and sold for a penny at each post office a piece issued by the Delaware Red Cross to stamp out the White Plague.

Now came the hard work. Selling the seals for a penny apiece wouldn't be easy, but it was the only way to keep the Brandywine shack going. Emily started her own one-woman campaign to emphasize how donating to Christmas Seals would help fight the battle against TB. She spoke to all sorts of groups, working overtime to make her campaign a success. publicize the seals and how donating to them would help fight the battle against TB. Finally, on December 7, 1907, the first seals were sold at a table in the corridor of the Wilmington post office.

On the first day, $25 was raised. But sales soon trailed off and by the end of the third day, Emily realized that the $300 goal would not be reached unless she did something drastic. So she boarded a train for nearby Philadelphia, hoping the city's leading newspaper, the North American, would get on the bandwagon. Emily approached the Sunday editor, who listened to her politely but was shocked at the thought of linking Christmas with disease.

Disappointed, Emily left his office, but decided to stop by the office of a staff columnist, Leigh Mitchell Hodges, whose writing she much enjoyed. When she told her story to Hodges and showed him a sheet of the seals, his reaction was immediate and dramatic. For he saw the sheet not as apiece of pin-holed paper, but as a flaming banner to head the fight against a dreaded foe.

Hodges quickly convinced the editor-in-chief of the newspaper to support the campaign. "Tell Miss Bissell the North American is hers for the holidays," the editor told Hodges. "Drop what you're doing, and give this your whole time. Take all the space you need. Ask her to send fifty thousand seals by tomorrow."

Articles appeared each day thereafter in the paper under the slogan "Stamp Out Tuberculosis". On the very first day of sales in Philadelphia, a seal was bought by a thin, ragged newsboy who stepped up to the counter in the newspaper lobby and said, "Gimme one--me sister's got it." At that moment Emily Bissell, Leigh Mitchell Hodges and the editor-in-chief realized that the word truly had spread, that people knew TB could be beaten, and that even the smallest contributions could someday add up to amounts large enough to crush TB.

Fifty thousand seals were quickly sold and another 50,000 printed. High public officials, including President Teddy Roosevelt, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and the Speaker of the House of Representatives endorsed the campaign. And by the time the holiday season was over, $3,000 had been raised--ten times the amount needed. initial goal. Emily Bissell, with a little help from her friends, had triumphed.