Redtree Times

“You can’t fool me—there ain’t no Sanity Clause!” 

–Chico Marx, A Night at the Opera

Short on time today. Woke up later than usual with Bing Crosby‘s Hawaiian Christmas song, Mele Kalikimaka, playing in my head as I stumbled out of bed. It was more irritating than joyful though I do normally enjoy the song.

Anyway, I am hustling around this morning but still wanted to share something. Since I am a little ruffled and crusty this morning, what better way to mark the season than with one of those macabre Victorian holiday cards? In past years I have shared images from Victorian era cards of psychotic looking Christmas clowns, weird walking root vegetables that vaguely look like relatives of Mr. Peanut, one animal eating another while eating yet another, crying children jammed into teapots, a mouse riding a lobster, and a polar bear attacking an ice skater.

I don’t know that we will ever fully comprehend the zeitgeist— the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of that era– of the Victorian era.  I often wonder what part of our era will be baffling to future generations in the same way. As you age, you begin to see it occurring as things that seemed normal in your childhood now receive startled reactions from younger generations when they first hear of them.

This Victorian card of a creepy Santa shoving an obviously bad kid into a sack with the simple greeting A Happy Christmas is one example from that era that so often feels weirdly strange to some of us. Yes, every happy Christmas I can remember entailed kidnapping children. But, hey, the kid should have thought of that earlier in the year when he was making those decisions to be naughty or nice.

Here’s a song from JD McPherson from his fun Christmas album, Socks, from several years back. This is Bad Kid. He might talk like a bad boy now but Santa is coming for him with a big empty sack.