A heartfelt letter written by author John Steinbeck offering paternal advice to his teenage son who was experiencing love for the first time has sold at auction for more than $32,000.

Christmas may be over, but a feast of movies and television shows arrive next week.

The first commercially printed Christmas card is up for sale — a merry Victorian-era scene that scandalized some who denounced it as humbug when it first appeared in 1843. “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You,” it reads. That didn't sit well at the time with the puritanical Temperance Society, which kicked up such a fuss it took three years before another Christmas card was produced. “They were quite distressed that in this ‘scandalous’ picture they had children toasting with a glass of wine along with the adults. It's believed to have gone on sale in the same week in December 1843 that Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol” first was published.