As early as 1822, the postmaster in Washington, D.C. was worried by the amount of extra mail at Christmas time.  His preferred solution to the problem was to:

Even though commercial cards were not available at that time, people were already sending so many home-made cards that sixteen extra postmen had to be hired in the city.  The proposed law was never passed, however, which in turn made possible Werner Erhard's entry into the Guinness Book of Records in 1975 for sending the most Christmas cards: 62,824 in a single year.