Wonderful Free Vintage Christmas Images To Print

I have curated a copyright-free collection of fabulous vintage Christmas images to download and use as you want, whether for decorations, crafts, or even to make your own Christmas cards.

Celebrating Christmas is a relatively modern phenomenon.  It’s only since the late 19th century that Christmas became a holiday and the biggest annual celebration we know today. 

I know that Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ, but the Victorians invented the way we celebrate the holiday today.

Queen Victoria’s German husband, Albert, introduced many festive traditions we celebrate today, such as decorated Christmas trees.  Henry Cole designed the first Christmas card in 1843.  The practice of sending a card soon caught on; by the 1880s, over 11 million Christmas cards were produced

Victorians also introduced the notion of Christmas becoming centred around the family. With the traditional family Christmas dinner, decorations, gift-giving and parlour games. 

Many think Charles Dickens invented the Victorian Christmas. He didn’t, but his famous book A Christmas Carol helped spread the Christmas message that is still relevant today of family, charity, peace and goodwill to all men.

To download and print the vintage Christmas image you want, click on the title above the picture, and it should download automatically to your device.

You can either print the image, save it to your hard drive, or send it off to an online printing company. Many of these companies offer gift printing services and traditional paper prints.

For example, the vintage Christmas image could be printed onto a pillow as I did with the personalized map pillows or printed onto wood slices to make Christmas ornaments

The Vintage Christmas Pictures

1. Santa Claus Sugar Plums

This is a vintage Christmas image for a 1968 advert for sugar plums. Sugar plum is now a pretty defunct term.

The Oxford dictionary defines a sugar plum as a comfit. That is a seed, nut, or scrap of spice coated with a layer of hard sugar, like the crunchy outer case of an M&M. Comfits are thought to be one of the world’s oldest sugar sweets.

There is also a reference to sugar plums in the Christmas-themed ballet “The Nutcracker“. One of the dances is called “the dance of the sugar plum fairy.”

2. Merry Christmas Typography

This is a beautiful piece of Christmas typography (1876) published by Currier & Ives. I love the acorns and other foliage wrapped around the text. This would be a great vintage Christmas image to colour in. 

3. Christmas Menu Sign

A vintage Christmas image of Santa clause and Christmas motifs in the dinner menu of Tulane Hotel, Nashville (1900).

4. Vintage Christmas Images Santa in Cart

Another vintage Christmas image from a 1900 menu, this one showing Santa in a present laden cart.

5. Christmas Sled With Holy

A 1907 vintage Christmas card image of a Christmas sled in the snow-laden with holy.

Holly, like ivy and mistletoe, is a wintergreen plant used in pagan times to celebrate the Winter Solstice and ward off evil spirits. The holy is a symbol as it also closely bears the crown. Its spiny leaves and red berries link to Jesus’ crown of thorns.

6. 1901 Vintage Christmas Image Father Christmas

This vintage Christmas image of Father Christmas depicts him in his usual look of a portly, jolly, white-bearded man wearing a red coat with a white fur collar and cuffs.

7. Vintage Father Christmas in Green 1909

In the past, images of Father Christmas sometimes depicted him in a green coat rather than a red one. Today pictures of Father Christmas nearly always show him wearing red robes.

8. 1901 Vintage Christmas Images Santa Chimney

Another image of Santa in his red robes. This time he is carrying a sack of presents and getting ready to descend the chimney.

This idea of Santa Claus coming down the chimney was popularized by the 1823 poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” also known as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

9. Vintage Christmas Images Wreath

This is another vintage Christmas image from a menu, this time a wreath of holly leaves. You will find some more wonderful holly illustrations, including vintage Christmas cards.

10. Barnes Ad Christmas Image To Print

A humorous Christmas advert for Barnes featuring Santa.

Many flowers are associated with Christmas, such as poinsettias and Christmas cacti. You can find some beautiful Christmas flower prints here to add to your collection of vintage Christmas images. Or you should check out these vintage snowflake prints.

If you loved these vintage Christmas images don’t forget to check out these other fabulous collections on Pictureboxblue.com

• Free Vintage Halloween Postcards
• Vintage Easter Cards
• Circus Posters
• Christmas Inventions Patent Arts