Christmas cards today usually feature a jolly Santa, fluffy woodland animal or green glittery tree, but Victorian versions had a much more terrifying tone.
Christmas cards today usually feature a jolly Santa, fluffy woodland animal or green glittery tree, but Victorian versions had a much more terrifying tone.
Jeesus….
What’s was wrong with these people…?
Weird, just weird.
I guess the Victorians knew that the commercialisation of Christmas was in-fact killing the spirit of it all and the artists were expressing this in art form or just maybe they wasn’t in the right frame of mind, who knows lol
Hard to get your head around the thinking in the dead red robin card with the wish ‘May yours be a joyful Christmas’…… Possibly made by the same person who came up with the instruction “Think of all the starving children in India” in persuading their kids to happily eat up their dinner!
So clearly this was not a happy time in history for the common folk.
Fashionable greeting cards for the era. At the time you used such cards to impress your friends. Who would’ve thought that 150 years later a snowflake easily offended population would look at these and freak out.
I love them. I can’t believe no one is reprinting them just for the laughs.
The Victorians were a sick, crazy lot. Today we are both sick, batshit crazy and as dumb as a doorknob. We just can’t see it (need to wait 100 years).
Want more? WeirdChristmas.com. Or @weird_christmas on Twitter. ;) It’s pretty much all I do….
Despite my better judgement, I checked out Craig Cringle’s sketchy link. It checks out…. if you are into the uncanniness you can only get from pre-1960’s holiday nostalgia. (Which I am.) 10/10 lifeless-eyed children. Would reccomend!
Yeah, more than one of these made me say, “Da fuq?”.
I suddenly have an urge to start a Victorian Christmas card collection.
God, I love each and every one of these. I loathe Christmas.
First, frequent use of laudanum. Second, the dead birds come from a legend that sparrows laughed when St. Stephen was martyred by being stoned to death. So kids in the middle ages would stone birds in vengeance on Boxing Day and carol for money to give the birdies proper funerals. As a Gothic lass, I approve of the use of troubling Christmas imagery to kick the sh*t out of all the Hallmark garbage. Please bring back Krampus (just not the dead birds).
Every year I post cards from this era, to spread the cheer of humbug.
to be fair, all there children were dieing and NOBODY knew why :| so this my be a way to make the pain go away. dont judge until its happend to you also, the victorian era was kinda messed up so sometimes these white cards are made with lead paint. {THE POISON}
I actually like the top one a lot. Fight me.
What’s up with that frog murdering the other frog though? Was it some kind of inside joke or meme?