Vintage Christmas Postcards

This sounds like a threat.  HANG UP YOUR STOCKING!  GO TO BED EARLY!  If you don't, NO NUTS!  Back in 1904, I guess telling a kid he wasn't going to get any nuts, much less candy and toys, must've scared the pants off them.

The area that is behind Jesus' head is actually a piece of material.  There's nothing to indicate if there's anything special about it, I guess it's just there to give a little depth.  Or it could be the real Shroud of Turin, proving once and for all that the one everyone thinks is the Shroud is, in fact, not.

The entire card is embossed.  The glitter outline may have been added later by someone armed with glitter glue and a short attention span.  There's no stamp on the card but it tells you to affix a one cent stamp for domestic and Canada, two cents for foreign, obviously before someone decided that the US is a foreign country as far as the post offices of both countries are concerned.

Back in the day, you could send your mail to a box at the corner of 52 Ave. & Aldama in Los Angeles and it would be delivered to Mr. and Mrs. Jansen.  I'm sure the box was cozy and warm.  To get your postcard to Miss Florence Reynolds, all you had to do with affix a one cent stamp and send it on its way to Lake George, New York.  Everyone at the post office knew Miss Florence.

Don't you love the name Rosebud Marine?!  Different kind of handwriting on the card from F.A. Barnes, doesn't really look like a man's handwriting.  Still cost one cent to mail a postcard in 1934.

I am completely in love with European Christmas postcards and the handwriting of one Elise Dumont is absolutely incredible!  European postcards, however, force you to write your notes on the front.  Whoever sent the card to the Aebergs wanted to be certain it reached them:  U.S.A. Amerika.

The front of the card addressed to Fr. M. Freier shows a baby Jesus standing with arms outstretched, wearing a red velvet robe, with "Gelegnele Weihnachlen" written across the bottom.  I'm sorry, but trying to pronounce that makes you sound like you're choking.  Klara Rudolf's friend should've used a bigger post card--her note is all over the front of the card, too.

Not everyone back in the good old days (this one was sent in 1904) had delicate, spidery handwriting.  This guy must've been a doctor!

At some point in time I bought a big stack of antique Christmas postcards.  I guess I thought I was going to do something crafty with them but then my vintage costume jewelry obsession took hold and that was that for crafty stuff, and antiques in general.

I also found a bunch of vintage Mississippi postcards (because, you know, I love living here so very much), other state postcards, about 25 Monterrey Mexico cards (?), and reproductions of some very racist, I mean REALLY racist, postcards made by the Curt Teich Co.  They are very well known for their state cards--the ones with the name of the state in big block letters across the front--but in the early 50's there must have been a market for cartoon postcards with, for instance, a chubby little black girl and this cheery message:  "Oh--I is not!----It must be sumthin' I et!!  And of course there are watermelons growing at her feet.  I'm pretty sure I bought them just to get them off the market.  Sorry, but no pix--I didn't think it would be a smart idea to put this kind of stuff on my blog for all the world to see.

Bye!