By David Futrelle
Our great- great- (great?) grandparents were kind of fucked up, at least if these were the sorts of things they sent each other on Halloween.
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My favorite is the one with the skeleton and pumpkin bat. I just like the scene.
I’ll spend Halloween listening to some old black metal albums. Too bad the first two albums of my ‘nymsake were removed from streaming. Vittra would make a great Halloween soundtrack.
I feel like these are somehow less messed up than the Christmas ones you’ve posted, TBH.
What have I learned today? The concept of “sexy witch” predates the ability of humans to draw non-terrifying cats.
I’d like to know the background to the “cronies” one. The idea that the 1% are pumpkins isn’t one I’ve encountered before.
@Moggie
Well, Donald Trump resembles a pumpkin in many ways. He’s orange, has weird stuff on top of his head, and has pulp for brains. Maybe that toupee is to cover a stem.
The skeleton with the pumpkins to me looks a lot like the art style used in the original Mars Attacks! trading cards of the ’50s.
This year i made a pumpkin that looks like bb8 from star wars. I think this is the peak of my artistic ability
@Lainy
That sounds cool. Can you post a picture?
Naglfar
I would love to but I still haven’t figured out how to do that yet
Oh come on, David. It’s clear that Halloween Chad is getting Stacy’s attention with that basket of bonbons he’s offering her.
I collect antique postcards — which these are, and they’re from the heyday of postcards, the turn of the 19th into the 20th century. If they have divided backs (that is, a line down the center to separate the message from the address), they’re post-1907. Indeed, one had a date on it of 1909. I hope you haven’t trashed these, because Halloween postcards are highly collectible and, consequently, rather expensive and valuable. There is nothing creepy about these: they’re beautiful and delightful!
The little girl in the last one looks like a lot of racist caricatures of Black children. Something about the hair and the mouth. I’m not certain, but it gives me that Jim Crow vibe and it’s really, really unsettling.
There are tons of racist cards from the turn of the 19th-into-20th century — not just regarding Blacks, but Chinese, Jews, Italians, and just about everyone who wasn’t White, Anglo-Saxon, or Protestant. Plus, there are anti-German WWI cards, and anti-German and Japanese WWII cards. Likewise, I collected Japanese postcards (among the most beautiful in the world), and I have cards from the Russo-Japanese War that depict the Russians as tall and green. They look very much like the guards of the Wicked Witch of the West designed for The Wizard of Oz thirty-plus years later. When I first saw the postcards, I figured that’s exactly where the art director of Oz got the idea, since the Oz Guards were, indeed, dressed like Cossacks. It’s uncanny.
A lot of these are making me hanker to watch Over The Garden Wall again.
@Catalpa
I actually watched it for the first time this evening! I was waiting in the dorm lobby for someone to deliver a curling iron to me, and the person at the desk had put it on.
I knew of it and have for a while, but it was interesting to see in action!
@Sam Katz
I know all about 19th century racism in ephemera and print culture — I’m an American historian. I just thought that it’s worth pointing out that the racist imagery is there, and let David decide how to label it or decide how or if to include that kind of imagery in postcard collections in the future. Just because racism was rife in s different form in the past than it is today doesn’t mean it’s defanged and needs no consideration. Rather, that card represents racist ideologies that fed into the ones Black people in America are still dealing with. The same goes for Native imagery on Thanksgiving cards. It’s an often-painful antecedent, and we have to give it hard scrutiny before presenting it without warning to an audience.
This is the future that liberals want:
So for Halloween, I decided to watch Granada version of The Hound of the Baskervilles on YouTube. I had it on VHS when I was a kid and I forgot how little Sherlock Holmes actually features in that story. He’s in it for 20 minutes at the start and about 20 minutes at the end. The rest is Watson walking around the barren English countryside.
I love Edward Hardwicke’s Watson, but the screen only really lights up when Jeremy Brett’s on screen and there’s not enough of him in that particular film.
It was Samhain for us; so we had to pretend it was all significant and spiritual. We spent some time discussing which sacred site to get freezing and drenched at, before deciding the pub was pretty pagan.
Some people really getting into the spirit of things though.
@Alan Robertshaw
I’ll take hummus and carrots any day. Though I prefer pita bread with hummus.
Are there any vegan candies available in the UK? In America I can think of a few vegan candies or other treats that could be handed out.
@ naglfar
Yeah loads. One group that really has sussed ‘the future is vegan’ is the market. My LinkedIn gets bombarded now with articles on how to capitalise on the vegan dollar. Lot of investment there now.
Socialize public transport & help awkward spirits get better socialized so they can comfortably use said transport.
No Facebook on train, just No-Face reading a book.
@Alan
That sign kind of seems mean? Like, to children? >.> Maybe I am missing something.
@Alan
I know Hallowe’en isn’t a thing typically celebrated in the UK, but do they not know that they can just turn out their lights, and the kids won’t come? Or has that rule been lost over the Atlantic, perhaps?
We had a problem last night, actually, where kids were bypassing our house because our light OF COURSE wasn’t working right on HALLOWE’EN of all nights. We had so much candy to give out!
I’ve never gone up to a house with the lights out, when I was trick or treating, and I’ve never had kids ring my doorbell when my light was off.
Alan:
In Finland we traditionally* get a day off for (Christian) All Hallow’s Day. People have long settled on “Make a brief visit to put candles on family graves, then spend the rest of the day at home eating Sunday roast and watching TV”.
*Nowadays, the day is regularly scheduled on a Saturday rather than 1 November.