10 Disturbing Christmas Cards From The Victorian Era

Christmas cards usually feature some variation of traditional festive scenes – like decorating the tree, summoning demon goats and stabbing frogs. No? Have a look at some of these bizarre and disturbing Christmas cards from the Victorian era.

Christmas cards began as a tradition of only the wealthy, until the 1870s when cheaper forms of postage began to be introduced. The Victorians embraced the tradition quickly, however many of the cards bare little resemblance to today’s greeting cards. To keep the cards affordable, printers would often use leftover patterns and images and merge them with Christmas themed designs. This lead to some truly bizarre, un-Christmassy cards being distributed.

Check out ten of the weirdest and most disturbing below.

Terrifying clown with a large knife, via digitiser2000

May yours be a joyful Christmas – unlike this dead Robin’s, via Tea Tree Gully Library

Ah, Christmas – that special time of year when giant vegetables rise from the ground, via Tumblr

A Merry Christmas to you, especially if you’ve recently committed murder, via Horrible Sanity

Racing to be eaten, via Valley of Steel

A sinister visitor, via Buzzfeed

Don’t worry if there’s no turkeys left, we’ll eat one of the children!, via CollegeHumor

Repent bad children, of Krampus will drag you off to Hell, via Edinboronow

Nothing says festive cheer like sexualising inanimate objects, via SheWalksSoftly

Living deliciously this Christmas, via via TuckDB Ephemer