“From All of Us to All of You: The Disney Christmas Card”

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas; I know I did. For the first time in over a decade, I had a traditional Christmas morning. Usually, the compromises made with visiting family members require non-traditional (and multiple) gift-giving activities that don’t necessarily take place on Christmas morning.

This year, one of my gifts was a book from my gift list: From All of Us to All of You: The Disney Christmas Card by Jeff Kurtti. It’s a hardcover art book filled with images of Christmas cards given out by the Walt Disney Studios over the decades. Included are 12 removable holiday greeting cards. Despite the wonderful Christmas goodness contained inside, there were a couple of things that could have been improved upon to really make the book 100% awesome.

Like the Maps of the Disney Parks book, the cover is divided into two hinged halves. This creates two slightly annoying problems. First, the left-side cover doesn’t support the opened pages, leaving them to flop around and subjecting them to possible damage. And second, the right-side cover unnecessarily takes up space. They’re minor annoyances; books shouldn’t be designed like this. But, I enjoyed the book’s content so much that I didn’t often focus on the design flaws.

The book is a simple read, which is to be expected. This is an art book, after all. There is some information on the Christmas cards as well as spotlights on the different artists that created them. Other information includes the various holiday cartoons, films, toys, partnerships, and charities (i.e. Toys for Tots) that the Walt Disney Studios have created/participated in and their impact. For example, partnering to create a wind-up Mickey & Minnie handcar brought toy-train manufacturer Lionel from the brink of bankruptcy, and all of their debts were paid off within 7 months. Those two mice have a lot of pull with the public!

Spread throughout the book are the 12 Christmas cards, each one in an envelope that is attached to the page. The envelopes look like they might be removable if you ever wanted to mail them, but why would you? That would ruin the book . . . sort of.

The cards are nothing terribly special. They are all the same size, and they feature holiday artwork on the front. The artwork is a collection of comic book covers and cartoon/film posters with only a few actual Christmas card designs. The interior of the cards are sparse with a basic greeting card message and some information about the artwork on the cover. The cards are the other places where I think the book really could have been improved.

I think the book REALLY could have reached its full potential if it contained actual replicas of past studio Christmas cards. There are so many unique card designs featured in the book, it boggles the mind why Disney Editions decided to included cookie-cutter cards instead. Replicas are simply a no-brainer, and I would have had more fun exploring the replicas. I have both The Disney Treasures and The Mickey Mouse Treasures, and the replicas inside of those books live up to their namesakes. After the first couple of cookie-cutter cards, I stopped looking inside of them.

Despite the few flaws, From All of Us to All of You: The Disney Christmas Card is a very nice addition to my personal collection of Disney books (and book collection in general), and I’ve been inspired by many of the unique studio card designs. We all have items and decorations that we bring out during the holidays, so why not have a seasonal coffee table book? Just don’t buy the book solely for the removable Christmas cards unless you plan to mail them out; they’d actually be more useful that way.

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