Redtree Times

You must never stop being whimsical.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

–Mary Oliver,  from Staying Alive in Upstream

Taking it easy this morning and rerunning a post from a past Easter today. I added the Mary Oliver passage since whimsy seems pretty evident in many of these Victorian greeting cards.

So, as the card above says, Easter Joy attend you. Sounds like those chicks translated the greeting from some obscure chicken dialect. Or German.

Okay, now get out of here. There’s a rabbit at my back door swinging a sword around– must be Easter.

[From 2021]

I thought for this Easter Sunday I would simply share a few Victorian Easter cards to go with an appropriate musical selection for the day. Much like the Victorian era Christmas cards I’ve shown here before, The Easter greeting cards from that time sometimes had a weird and creepy edge to them. Or, at least, some sort of inexplicable sensibility that is lost on modern audiences and makes you scratch your head a bit. Take a look below and see if they make sense to you.

Maybe next year I will share some strange photos of people dressed as Easter Bunnies posing with kids, like I have done in the past with some unsettling photos of Santas. The odd thing is that most of the creepiest Easter Bunny photos don’t seem that far in the past. A little too uncomfortably recent for my tastes.

For this Sunday Morning Music selection I am going with a song that is very on the nose for my devout friends out there. For those of you who do not observe the religious aspects of this day, it still is worth a listen. It is Sam Cooke, after all. You can never go wrong with Sam Cooke singing anything, but his gospel work is extra special. This is Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord) backed up The Soul Stirrers, the gospel group with which he started his illustrious career.

Sending you Easter Greetings, maybe in the form of a chicks or bunnies wearing Pickelhauben, those old German military helmets. Seems like small animals were more militaristic then than now. Go figure.

Anyway, Easter Joy attend you.