Freaky Victorian Easter Cards II

Victorian holiday cards, whether Christmas or Easter, can be counted on to be bizarre or sentimental--and for the most part, secular. While frogs (for some inexplicable reason) in Christmas cards are experiencing mishaps and doing foolish things, in Easter cards, not surprisingly, rabbits and chicks are featured, for better or worse.

     A very large, well-dressed rabbit proposes to an oddly proportioned girl. Did she accept? 

 A hen with color-coordinated dress and umbrella chases away a bunny. Was he trying to take away her eggs?

                                  Bang! In this German card, a chick blasts away at a rabbit.

There's not much joy for this female chick in a guardhouse with broken eggs spilled on the ground. The chick soldier is wearing a Pickelhaube, a German style helmet from that period. Hmm.

                                     Rabbits smoking flowers in egg bowls. *cough*

    Easter bunnies drop their egg basket when bees and mud-slinging frogs attack them.

                             Cherubic babies go at Easter eggs with hammers. Take that!

 Storks don't bring babies, bunnies do, in eggshells. No message on the sign. We, too, are left speechless.

                              

  An injured Jewish chick hobbles to his egg-home. Attacked by Gentiles?

 Very bizarre: Injured rabbits pushing a severely wounded one come across a small one slumped on a road marker. Were they shot by gun-toting chicks?

'Want to see more vintage cards? Check out this BBC article, "The Odd World of Victorian Easter Cards":"The Odd World of Victorian Easter Cards"

Happy Easter! 'Hope it's not too weird. 

More Creepy Christmas Cards: Bizarro Victorian Greetings

In my first foray into Victorian holiday greeting cards, Creepy Christmas Cards: Bizarro Victorian Holiday Greetings, I found a strange world of violence and creepiness.  Animals killed each other with glee, or were gleeful about being eaten for dinner, children were terrorized or abused. Yep, pretty dang merry.

But apparently in the sensibilities of the late 19th century, these cards were funny. They were cheap and popular. I'm not about to try to explain why these weird images evoked holiday laughs among some Victorians. Instead, let's look at some more images that just might be even weirder than some in the 2014 post.

What could be more festive to bring Christmas Blessings than a large, venomous jellyfish?

In this card from the Nova Scotia Archives, colorful and weird sea creatures (starfish are also venomous) bring "Best Wishes for Christmas."

Red ants (Christmas color, with hats and musical instruments) attack and overcome black ants (bah humbug color) to bring you "Compliments of the Season."

A gigantic two-horned beetle dances with a frog as a green insect plays the tambourine. Although beetles are herbivorous, it's not too much of a stretch imagining the frog having his head accidentally pinched off. In these cards frogs were subject to all kinds of violence from mishaps to murder.

"Hearty wishes" to you as one frog stabs another through the heart and a third leaps into the water.

Yep, don't be an ass and overdo the booze at the holiday office party.

 "Loving friends" owls and rabbits dance by the light of the moon. Well, what could possibly go wrong here?

It's not going to be a joyful Christmas for one of these creatures if the androgynous kid with the big fork spears accurately.  

Rabbit contemplating suicide in a snare. So happy. So content.

Elves riding rats run down a rabbit for Christmas dinner.

Beside using rats as hunting steeds, elves ( trolls?) enjoy a good dinner of roasted rat, cooked whole.

A Happy Christmas! This time it looks like the human is the entree for the feast.

                   

Androgynous pothead weirdo brings compliments of the season standing before a blazing oven full of strange foods.

Drunken rosy-cheeked Nordic folks primed with "akevit" are pulled in a sleigh boat by a presumably similarly inebriated hog.

St. Nick rams junior into a sack, to take as a present to . . .? 'Better watch out! 

He didn't watch out, and now he's stewing in a teapot, sending "A Christmas Greeting with Love."

World War I Santa with crying child and deer wearing gas masks. They don't even bother to caption this dreary image.

Cat thugs lie in wait to bring greetings via beatings with fists and clubs.

 

The tables turned: rats about to tuck into a cat roasted with potatoes. What a feast!

This is only a sampling of the dozens of strange and creepy Victorian Christmas cards. Want to see more roasted rats and cats, dead birds, and accident-prone frogs wishing you compliments of the season? Check out these sites:

Undine@Horrible Sanity
 Bored Panda
Kellen Perry
Susan Kulhman on Pinterest
 The Daily Mail

Freaky Easter Cards: Bizarro Victorian Holiday Greetings II

A couple of years ago, I did a post on Creepy Christmas Cards: Bizarro Victorian Holiday Greetings http://valleyofsteel.blogspot.com/2014/12/creepy-christmas-cards-bizarro.html. Well, guess what--the Victorians came up with quite a selection of weird Easter cards as well. While not as creepy as some of the Christmas ones, Victorian Easter greetings could be just as bizarre, and to modern eyes, quite inappropriate. Like the Christmas cards, the Easter cards are overwhelmingly secular and often feature anthropomorphized animals pulling carts, whipping each other, playing instruments, riding each other and other weird activities (for animals).

A boy in a strange outfit plays a flute (chews licorice?) with a pussy willow whip in hand while sitting in a nest of very large eggs. The rabbit, quite wisely, is getting the hell out of there.

Rabbits are attempting to carry a supersized golden egg with pussy willow switches. They aren't having much success. Everything is out of scale in this card set in a huge field.

Easter greetings, military style. Rabbit soldiers fire eggs out of a cannon while an officer riding a chicken brandishes a sword. Note that while the text is in English, the rabbits are wearing Pickelhauben, German army helmets.

 

Kittens dressed as children are dyeing a purple egg whence a large "chickee" is hatching. That's why the sender couldn't send eggs. Or is it because the kittens ate the chick as soon as it emerged?

With an ominous sky overhead, chicks carrying baskets wait to board a steamship. From their hats, we can deduce that these are affluent fowl. One can't help but wonder why going on a ship has anything to do with Easter celebrations.

Chicks inexplicably wearing spring bonnets admire the eggshells from which they presumably emerged. Where are the other two chickens?

A sad rabbit quartet wishes us "A Joyful Easter." With a drum, two cornets, and a violin (played on the right-hand side), it's hard to imagine what any tunes coming from this quartet would sound like.

Too cheap to buy different cards for Christmas and Easter? You could scratch out "A Happy Easter" and use this card showing an adult man-rabbit pushing kid-rabbits and eggs through the snow in a sled for Christmas.

Whoa. What the heck is going on here? Maybe the egg was too large to hard boil.

Ach du lieber! This gigantic chick just came out of the shell with a shotgun to dispatch the Easter Bunny. To hell with gun control. Blam!

The Dutch aren't slackers when it comes to weirdness. An anthropomorphic soft-boiled egg with legs and arms is in the process of being eaten, while a very tiny chick looks on, horrified.

Better watch out, kiddies. 

An evil-looking rabbit watches another rabbit with a basket of eggs on its back drown. Happy Easter!

Happy Easter from the Prince of Darkness. This, the cover of a turn-of the-19th-century satirical magazine, "Puck." The devil, they say.

ADDENDUM 

After my German cousin Hanne read this post, she sent me a vintage Easter card that she found in the family home in Weißenstadt. It's a post card addressed to Hanne's grandmother Babette, postmarked April 5, 1917--almost exactly 100 years ago. This date is during World War I, and perhaps that explains why the card seems more subdued than festive.  

'Want to see more weird Victorian cards? Check out these sites:
Twenty Bizarre Old Easter Cards http://www.popthomology.com/2013/03/twenty-bizarre-old-easter-cards.html
Crazy Website: Happy Easter Earthlings  http://www.crazywebsite.com/Pg-Holiday-Entertainment-Humor/Easter/Funny_Cards/pg-bizarre-old-greeting-cards/vintage-Easter-greetings-strange-kids-giant-raw-egg_jpg.htm