A pet portrait as a Christmas gift: traditions, timing and safety

A royal portrait of a family dog or cat fits Christmas well: it is a picture of someone the family loves, given on a day built around family. This page covers the Victorian customs behind giving pictures at Christmas, how to plan a portrait around a date that never moves, which styles suit the season, and the holiday hazards that can hurt the pet in the portrait. It also explains why a portrait is a safer Christmas surprise than a new puppy or kitten. For the steps every portrait gift shares, start with the guide to pet portrait gifts.

Christmas and the giving of pictures

English Heritage says many of today's favourite Christmas traditions were made popular by Queen Victoria and the royal family in the 19th century. Pictures were part of them from the start.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London holds the first Christmas card. The museum says its founding director, Henry Cole, sent it in 1843. Cole was busy with mail at Christmas and wanted a faster way to send greetings, so he asked his friend, the artist John Callcott Horsley, to design a card. Horsley's central picture shows three generations of the Cole family raising a toast, framed by smaller scenes of people giving to the poor. Cole had a thousand copies printed, each with space for a handwritten greeting. The first Christmas card, in other words, was a family portrait.

The royal family gave pictures too. English Heritage, which cares for Queen Victoria's seaside home at Osborne, says Victoria and Prince Albert famously gave each other jewellery, works of art, sculptures and paintings. Their children and grandchildren often gave the queen things they had made themselves, such as paintings, embroidery or handicrafts. English Heritage says Albert commissioned a portrait of the family's St Bernard, Maurice, to give Victoria on her birthday. More of the royal dog paintings are described in the Purrspectives article on Queen Victoria and her dogs.

The Christmas tree came to the royal household before Victoria. English Heritage says Queen Charlotte, who like Albert was raised in Germany, set up the first decorated evergreen tree in England at Queen's Lodge, Windsor, in 1800. Victoria and Albert made the custom widely known when an engraving of them beside a decorated tree with their children was published in the 1840s.

Christmas Eve or Christmas morning

English Heritage says Victorians shared presents on the evening of Christmas Eve, where many families today open them on Christmas Day. In the royal household the unwrapped presents were spread out across tables, as they were for royal birthdays. At Osborne, the family first joined the servants in the servants' hall on Christmas Eve to give them gifts, and the queen did this before her own family opened anything.

Families still differ on this. Some open everything on Christmas Eve, some on Christmas morning, and some keep one gift for last. A portrait works best as that last gift, when the wrapping is cleared away and the pet is in the room. The page on presenting a portrait gift covers how to stage that moment, and what research found about wrapping.

Planning around a fixed date

Christmas Day is December 25 every year. The Canada Revenue Agency lists Friday, December 25, 2026, among Canada's public holidays, and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lists December 25 as the federal Christmas Day holiday. In 2027 it falls on a Saturday.

A fixed date is easy to see coming, and easy to start too late. Work through the steps in order:

1. Decide early that the gift is a portrait. The gift countdown on the main gift guide page counts the days to Christmas and lists what to prepare.
2. Find the photo. For someone else's pet, this takes the longest. The page on getting a full-size photo for a surprise portrait explains how to get the original file from a helper.
3. Choose the style for the recipient's home as well as for the pet.
4. Choose the edition. A digital download or an art print, and for a print, the size and the paper.
5. Plan the frame if you are framing it, and where it will hang.
6. Plan the moment you will hand it over.

The pricing page and the questions page answer the practical questions about each edition. Leave room in your plan.

Choosing a style for a Christmas portrait

Purrealism offers 15 styles: nine from Indian royal courts and six from European history. Any of them can be a Christmas gift. A few points help narrow the choice.

Colour. A portrait with deep reds and gold sits well beside Christmas decorations. The gallery includes a golden retriever wearing a royal crown and red robe, and a ginger cat in a red and gold royal robe, both in the Indian Royalty style. Choose colours that will also suit the room in March, because the portrait stays up after the tree comes down.

Period. The Victorian Noble style comes from the same century as the first Christmas card and the royal Christmas tree. For a recipient who loves old Christmas customs, it ties the gift to their history. The Regency Era, Renaissance Royal and Baroque Aristocrat styles come from earlier periods of European history.

The pet's character. A calm old dog may suit a seated noble, and a bold young cat a warrior. The Purrspectives guide to choosing a royal portrait style works through coat colour and character.

A family gift. Christmas is a day when several people give to one person. A 2021 set of 12 studies from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business looked at occasions such as the winter holidays, where one person receives gifts from several givers. It found that recipients focus on how much thought went into each gift, while givers wrongly worry about how their gift compares in value. A portrait of the family's own pet shows that thought.

Holiday hazards for the pet in the portrait

On Christmas Day the pet is at home among the presents. The Oregon Veterinary Medical Association publishes a list of holiday risks, and several of them sit right beside the presents.

The association also says pets can become overexcited, confused or frightened by guests, and advises keeping them in a quiet part of the house while visitors are over. Watch the front door, and make sure the pet has an ID tag or a microchip in case it slips out. It also asks owners to keep pets on their normal routine of feeding and exercise, even when the household's routine changes.

A portrait under the tree, and the puppy after

The ASPCA says Americans have a long tradition of giving pets, usually puppies or kittens, as gifts for special occasions such as birthdays and holidays. Veterinary and welfare groups ask givers to think it through. The Oregon Veterinary Medical Association says the holidays may not be the best time to bring home a new pet, because the excitement, noise and change of routine can make it hard for the pet to settle. It recommends waiting until after the holidays, and if a pet is the gift, letting the recipient select it.

The ASPCA's position statement on pets as gifts is more open to the idea. It cites its own survey, in which 96 percent of people who received a pet as a gift said it increased their love or attachment to the pet or had no effect, and it says 86 percent of those pets were still in the home. It still recommends giving a pet only to someone who has shown a lasting interest in owning one and can care for it. It adds that the recipient's schedule should be free enough to help the pet settle in, which is especially important during the holidays.

A portrait of the pet the family already has carries none of that risk. And if a new pet is planned for the new year, a portrait of it later makes a second gift. The page on portrait gifts for a new puppy or kitten covers that timing.

When Christmas is hard

For some families, a pet died during the year and the first Christmas without it is ahead. A portrait can still be a gift in that case, and it needs more care. The pet memorial portraits guide covers memorial gifts and the first holidays after a loss. For gift ideas for the owners of living pets, the Purrspectives list of gifts for dog lovers has fifteen more.