Thread by @LaurynIpsum

I fucking live for unhinged Victorian Christmas cards. Some years I just share the terror with friends, and others I choose to spread the chaos. This year I pick the latter.

Let’s start with the truly inexplicable.

Frog + beetle waltz
Sky jellyfish
Mutant beet-man
GOAT
🧵

I figured we should start with the most chaotic before diving into themes. I genuinely can’t explain those four.

But fear not, I have the homogeny you crave. DEAD BIRDS FOR LUCK. (Wren day on the 26th was a good luck ritual where you killed a robin or wren bc… that’s lucky?)

Another favored tradition: snowmen with **deeply threatening auras**

Build the creature of your demise! I’m pretty sure that first one is going to kill that robin. Clearly he celebrates wren day.

Of course no holiday is complete without animals waiting to murder you. The robins are back, WITH A VENGEANCE.

Another ever-popular theme: children baked into food! (Children have long been considered a Christmas delicacy)

As was tradition, one would pick either a clown, a polar bear, a snow gnome (?), or frog to do battle with. If you won against the frog, you would get to take whatever gold he had on him at the time. The clown would promise to stop stealing your meats.

Of course sometimes your message would be simple: remind your friends and family that danger lurks around every corner. Bring the gift of fear.

Due to the lack of environmental regulations at the time, the meat supply was often tainted, leading to your Christmas dinner coming back to life. Christmas carols were designed to drown out the screaming.

So much screaming…

This first card depicts one of the first instances of a Christmas dinner uprising. Due to the high death toll of that year, children became a favored ingredient (as previously mentioned) as everyone knows children are infinitely easier to defeat than most other dinner meats.

Because violence lurked around every corner, animals were often enlisted to deliver Christmas cards and messages. Owls and mice were popular choices, with bikes and lobsters proving themselves to be the most reliable methods of transportation.

Cursed with sentience and a knowledge of their own impending demise, some *snowmen with threatening auras* actually became violent (the tale of frosty the snowman is heavily altered from the original Germanic tale where frosty drunkenly assaulted anyone who ventured too close)

Violence lurked around every corner. As roving gangs of clowns took out the English police force, people and pets alike took up arms.

Arming animals was a foolish choice, as they immediately became violent. (See tweet #4)

They staged a full on revolt in the winter of 1876, and maintained control of a large part of London until spring on 1877.

Trying their hand at various human activities, frogs quickly learned they were terrible at ice skating

I hope this holiday season is treating you well. Have some marine life and another dead bird.

So many dead birds…