Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas

Oh by gosh by golly. Its time for . . . rowdy bands of drunkards roaming the streets lighting firecrackers and firing off guns? Gangs of masked youths invading peoples houses demanding food drink and moneyand threatening to break the windows (or worse) unless theyre given what they want? Welcome to Christmas circa 1800. Yes the season of light joy and gift-giving was once regarded as a time of darkness danger and dissipationand celebrated with all-too-public displays of noisemaking inebriation and gluttonous overeating. (Well maybe not everything has changed.) And though we tend to imagine Victorian-era Christmases as sentimental gatherings around the candlelit tree blazing hearth and festive punchbowl the 19th-century evidence tells us quite otherwise. Drawing from his extensive collection of antique postcards greeting cards advertising giveaways and other ephemera author John Grossman presents a picture of Christmas past that frankly looks a lot more like Halloween. Broomstick-riding witches and vampire batborne cupids deliver New Years greetings. Fur-clad fairies gather round a campfire to roast their Christmas dinnera huge dead rat. And Saint Nicholas? Hes that skinny guy in the bishop robes who arrives with his dark companion the Devil-like Krampus brandishing switches to punish the badly behaved. With Christmas Curiosities STC wishes you a very merry very scary Christmas.