Short one today, because after reading this, you will want to continue the search.
“May yours be a Joyful Christmas,” wishes the dead bird…WHAT?
As hard as it is to believe, “traditional Christmas” did not always look the way it looks today. Many of the time honored traditions and images of Christmas are creations of the last two hundred years. Artists and marketers like to take us back to Victorian England to capture a nostalgia for when Christmas was really Christmas. Shoppers in malls are entertained by “Dickens Carolers,” who capture in their dress and song a reality that feels less commercial and far more joyous, nothing like a top hat, hoop skirt, and scarf to say “Merry Christmas!”
What is lost in this 21st Century nostalgic portrayal is exactly how completely weird the Victorian Christmas was. Dickens, who supposedly captured these traditions so well in A Christmas Carol was actually picking and choosing from among a wide variety of Christmases to create the Christmas we know today. Victorians celebrated (or didn't celebrate) the holiday in many ways that would seem much more offensive than a plain red cup. In many ways, the Victorians were making up Christmas as they went.
Nowhere is this seen more clearly in the Christmas cards. Sending cards for the holiday was a new “tradition,” and many of the cards were anything but Hallmark. For an entertaining afternoon, search for strange Victorian Christmas cards and enjoy the images. Though you will see some fir trees and a very rare appearance of Father Christmas, you will primarily see images of weird personified animals, scenes of violence and death, and Krampus, all with a joyful greeting.
The strangest thing I found today were a number of cards with detailed pictures of dead birds. While the artistry is obvious, the juxtaposition of picture and message is truly jarring to a modern eye. The birds in the pictures I saw were small, too small to be made into Christmas dinner (perhaps four and twenty could be baked in a pie). They reflected a very different sensibility, where a picture could be beautiful apart from its context (remember, this is the culture that would pose for pictures with their dead relatives). The bird on the card is a beautiful drawing and therefore a charming Christmas gift, as suitable as a drawing or photograph dying tree covered with tinsel.
I'm not trying to suggest that the Victorian Christmas was right and our own is wrong, but rather that the cultural trimmings of our celebration only make sense through the lens of our time, and someday our descendants might look at our Christmas cards and wonder about how strange we were and how little we understood the true meaning of Christmas.
As always, I invite your comments.
Image: http://valleyofsteel.blogspot.com/2014/12/creepy-christmas-cards-bizarro.html
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