Our Christmas Card collection features Victorian and international Christmas cards, primarily from the 19th century. These curious cards demonstrate how differently prior generations and different cultures have experienced the holiday. You may also enjoy our Christmas Stories and Children’s Christmas Stories
Swedish Christmas by Adele Soderberg (1916)German L’Christmas Tree (1900)Norwegian Glaedelig Jul (1887)Australian Boys in the Crow’s NestFrog band by Louis PrangCatland by Louis Wain (1910)Victorian Lace (1870)Swedish Card by Carl Rogind (1919)German Dwarf Postcard, Good LuckWilliam B. Steenberge (1844-1922)Victorian Children (1885)“Jovial” Froggies, BerlinHolly Berry by Shirley Wynn (1880)Sweden Happy New YearTime for New Year Chick!Russian Snowman (1900)Ragaz by Caswell (1879)U.S. Greetings by J. Hoover (1880)Goody Santa Claus (1889)U.S. Postcard (1907)Norwegian Greetings (1908)Kate Greenaway Maiden PoemRussian Greetings (1917)Nova Scotia GreetingsChristmas Song of Joy (1880)Jacobite Broadsite Card (1925)German Card by Frances Brundage (1937)Brownie Rust Craft (1950)Have a Cat Crazy Christmas!Happy New Year from Germany, 1910Godt Nytaar! (Danish Happy New Year)Happy New Year, 1885Happy New Year, 1910Charles R Knight, 1922Thomas Crane, 1880Russian New Year in Yiddish, 1900Pop goes the Frog, New Year, 1908
By MwsR
One day she was going to decorate her house just like you see it done in magazines and movies…but not today. She just couldn’t get into the Christmas spirit. Today she found herself thinking of Christmas’s past. She felt the feelings she had felt before, today she remembered it all.
It’s easy to get swept up in holiday traditions but what if your holiday traditions were erased? Hers had been, she had to understand though that all was not lost. She needed to know that holidays were and could be so much more than tradition.
This year, this time, she needed to find the meaning behind,the traditions and gatherings.
See for her there was so much that life had changed for her, that she needed to gather what she could. She needed meaning not traditions to keep her going.
When she was a child everything was so exciting, she missed that feeling. Now that she grew older she longed for a truth, a realism she didn’t get from all the holiday hustle and bustle, or from all the worrying over bills versus buying presents. Her world should be more. More than that she wanted everyone around her to be grateful.
Why should she struggle? Why couldn’t it look at easy as tv or movies, in that they all had smiles, presents, and cheer?
She really thought hard and tried to find something that she could internally use, use to feel better.
Alongside remembering past holidays, she remembered those who were no longer in her present, and she cried. She just sat there and felt the loss like it was happening there in that moment. She thought about the true meaning of Christmas and the sacrifice that people gave many years ago , where two parents that had a newborn that was despised by man, yet loved and awaited by millions. The sacrifice they made to make sure he was safe and cared for. They left their family, their homes and their own comforts.
Sometimes, she thought, one must give more than they ever will receive in return. Sometimes no matter where we have been we can still find a place to belong. It all is in our hearts and minds, she thought.
Her Christmas tears turned on her mind, but she found the strength to keep trying, to keep looking for the answers, but with a newness of heart.
Christmas tears , the ones shed so long ago in a manger, now in her own eyes…that made life seem clearer around this time of year.
The lesson is life can bring you down but if you look,more than you think can be found.