Page 1 of 2
Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 8:50 am
by Gob
The first commercially printed Christmas card is up for sale – a merry Victorian-era scene that scandalised some when it first appeared in 1843.
The card, which is being sold online through a consortium run by Marvin Getman, a Boston-based dealer in rare books and manuscripts, depicts an English family toasting the recipient with glasses of red wine.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You,” it reads. But for teetotallers – and there were plenty of those in the 19th century – the imagery included a bit too much holiday cheer: in the foreground, a young girl is pictured taking a sip from an adult’s glass.
That did not sit well at the time with the puritanical Temperance Society, which kicked up such a fuss it took three years before another Christmas card was produced*.
“They were quite distressed that in this scandalous picture they had children toasting with a glass of wine along with the adults. They had a campaign to censor and suppress it,” said Justin Schiller, founder and president of Battledore, a Kingston, New York-based dealer in antiquarian books who is selling the card.
Getman said the hand-coloured lithograph is believed to have been a salesperson’s sample. Only 1,000 copies were printed and sold for a shilling apiece, and experts believe fewer than 30 have survived, he said.
The card, intended to double as a greeting for Christmas and New Year’s Day, was designed by the painter and illustrator John Callcott Horsley at the suggestion of Sir Henry Cole, a British civil servant and inventor who founded the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
Cole is widely credited with starting the tradition of sending holiday cards, a multimillion-dollar industry today.
It is believed to have gone on sale in the same week in December 1843 that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published.
Christie’s auction house in Lon
*They had people like Meade about in those days
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 10:15 am
by MajGenl.Meade
Arse. A glass of sherry round at Grandma and Grandpa's house in the late 1950s was my favorite Christmas happening.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:09 pm
by TPFKA@W
The road to perdition.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:11 pm
by BoSoxGal
My great grandmother was a teetotaler; my great grandfather hid a bottle of whiskey in the barn and was a very diligent farmer, always checking on the animals.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:26 pm
by Big RR
Puritans. People who are worried that somehow, somewhere, someone is having a good time, and they won't rest until they put an end to it.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 2:57 pm
by Sue U
I thought Christmas celebration -- well, the cheery kind, anyway -- was a Roman Catholic thing. Just curious as to when Protestants/Anglicans adopted it as well.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 3:12 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
Depends what you mean by cheery. English Anglicanism and the Lutherans were, after all, Rome-lite and the Feast of the Incarnation, Twelfth Night and all that never really went out of favor (bar the occasional Romanish monarch or yer odd Huntingdon street tough or yer actual Frog revos). Now yer Calvin - not an enthusiast. Yer Puritans even more so. But ye common folke tended to hang on to it all regardless. But the general societal beanfeast owes a lot to Dickens and other early 19th century tendencies.
FWIW here in SA, Easter is by far more honored among the Christian churches. December is hot, go on vacation to the seaside time, and not much to do with religion at all really.
(BSG that's not you know . . . the bad thing, is it?)
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 6:49 pm
by BoSoxGal
You are a filthy minded pervert! He was just doing shots out there and telling his troubles to the milk cow.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:24 pm
by MajGenl.Meade
(No.... I meant me and the "m" word)
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2020 6:20 pm
by Big RR
Wouldn't that be in the outhouse, not the barn?
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 9:38 pm
by ex-khobar Andy
MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:24 pm
(No.... I meant me and the "m" word)
I'm lost. Margaritas? Malbec? Malt whisky? Or was he an early Mary Jane adherent?
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:22 pm
by Guinevere
ex-khobar Andy wrote: ↑Sun Dec 06, 2020 9:38 pm
MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑Fri Dec 04, 2020 9:24 pm
(No.... I meant me and the "m" word)
I'm lost. Margaritas? Malbec? Malt whisky? Or was he an early Mary Jane adherent?
Mansplaining.... (not that I’m suggesting it was, only that’s what I believe Meade was referring to).
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:09 am
by MajGenl.Meade
I simply didn't want to explain it
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:27 am
by Guinevere
MajGenl.Meade wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:09 am
I simply didn't want to explain it
And we wimminfolk figured it out on our own. Imagine that, lawsy lawsy.
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:47 am
by Big RR
And here I was thinking it was self abuse. Excuuuuuuse Meeeeeeeee!
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:55 am
by Guinevere
Big RR wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:47 am
And here I was thinking it was self abuse. Excuuuuuuse Meeeeeeeee!
That’s because you’ve never been mansplained
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 3:01 am
by Sue U
To be fair, I did ask a question and actually *was* looking for an explanation. Thanks, Meade!
(I'm not really up on the nuances of practice among the various Jesus cults, and find it all rather confusing.).
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:38 pm
by Big RR
True, but then are you just assuming I have engaged in this sort of self abuse?
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:56 pm
by Guinevere
Yup. You’re a man, aren’t you?
Re: Shock horror X rated Xmas card....
Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2020 3:04 am
by Bicycle Bill
Guinevere wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:56 pm
Yup. You’re ⃥a⃥ ⃥m⃥a⃥n⃥ human, aren’t you?
Fixed it for you, Guin.
EVERYBODY does it.
It's just that with the exception of 'jilling off', 'playing the slots',
(and I've also come across the term 'polishing the pearl'), there aren't so many clever euphemisms for when the other 50% are engaged in that sort of activity.
-"BB"-