Posts Tagged: holidays
Halloween Postcards: Amorous Pumpkins!
Kiss a Squash Day
I’ve enjoyed finding Creepy Valentines and sharing them with you, because who doesn’t want a murderous or suicidal Valentine greeting, am I right? So recently, I came across a feature on antique Halloween postcards from the “Golden Age of Postcards.” I think this is the same era as the Christmas cards that feature dead bugs and homely suffragettes. Anyway, among the witches, I was surprised to see so many postcards featuring amorous pumpkins. I guess even way back when in the days of yore (just like now), nothing says loving like a squash (though wasn’t an eggplant in the olden days). So, here we go. Also, all these cards are in the public domain, so right click to your heart’s content.
Hairy Pumpkins
Please note the handwritten note: “I send you a kiss-” And what a kiss it is. Two hirsute and swarthy orange globes, all puckered up. I can’t tell if this is a gendered osculation, but one squash has some mighty impressive sideburns. I mean, how romantic! Wouldn’t you be all a-flutter if you received this postcard? Romance galore! However, the cat doesn’t seem to agree. The cat actually looks a little freaked out. Shouldn’t we all be a little freaked out?
Jane Austen Pumpkins
A more genteel take on the kissing pumpkins. Here, the pumpkins are a bit less androgynous, what with the breeches and skirts and whatnot. And look, he presented her with a posy of carrots, so that’s romantic, yes? I mean, a little on the phallic side, but at least they’re not eggplants. Also, the apparently male pumpkin is green, which is a nice variation. I like how their little stems perch on their heads like tiny hats. But again, the cat is really freaked out. Perhaps the black cats are a kind of Greek chorus, providing the audience reaction when seeing pumpkins kiss?
Yee Haw Pumpkins
Okay, I’m a little more comfortable here because despite the clothes, these are actual Jack-o-Lanterns. I have to say, I like the carved pumpkins better than the smooching anthropomorphized pumpkins. These country pumpkins have a down home lovin’ kind of air about them, like scarecrows come to life. Even though the kiss isn’t shown, Jackie is pointing to the place where she wants Jack to plant a big ol’ pumpkin smackeroo. The cat appears a little wistful, instead of aghast. And it seems the moon approves…
Foot Fetish Pumpkins
Okay, now, hold up. What in the Sam Hain is going on here? There’s a pretty girl sitting on a huge Moon squash, and a serpentine parade of pumpkin creatures with zucchini limbs and vacant eyes coming to…do what exactly? Take turns looking at her foot? Or are they going to bow? Pay Halloween homage of some sort? Or is it something more interesting than that? What are the pumpkin zombies up to? “Strange things will happen” for sure! If only there were a black cat to provide reaction and commentary on the action.
When Pumpkin Love Gets Weird
Okay, speaking of strange things…
“On Halloween your slightest wish
is likely to come true,
so be careful, or the gobelins
will spoil your wish for you.”
I’d like to know who is wishing for what, here. It seems like the pumpkin person is the most likely to be making the wish, what with the googly eyes and goofy smile. But there’s a chance it’s this Diana Moon Goddess person whose wish is the subject. Is she supposed to be a witch? She has moons on her shoes. Perhaps she’s hoping to animate the pumpkin man (though he looks quite animated to me) (all he needs is an eggplant at this point). The “Gobelins” give me no clue. I would hope they’d interrupt this pairing, but they look delighted by the budding romance between Moon Goddess and Squash Man. The little weirdos. What’s going on? Again, without a black cat to react, I am lost.
And…A Cute One
Okay, even though this witch is making advances on a member of the vegetable kingdom, this still strikes me as relatively tame compared to the other cards. This Jack O’Lantern isn’t aggressively amorous. It’s just a nice Jack O’Lantern that seems completely amenable to being kissed. It probably helps that this pumpkin doesn’t have a body. Or sideburns. And the witch is pretty. There’s nothing overtly aggressive about her little closed-mouth peck, which almost seems innocent. Overall, there’s no foot worship, no weird leering going on. And we don’t have a black cat, but we do have an intense little bat speeding over like a traffic cop to break this up. Come on, little bat. This looks harmless.
Happy Halloween, and may all your pumpkins be normal.
From the Trunk: What’s with those Christmas lights?
I live in a low-rent neighborhood in a high-end suburb. It shows in our Christmas lights, with holiday choochoo trains on the rooftops and candy canes making fences all up and down the lane. Other displays are so sad, I wonder why anyone bothers.
(This might be a slight exaggeration.)
Others are masses of bad taste. Tangles of Christmas lights hang from every eave and gutter. Yard after yard features inflated nylon Christmas figures, giant Santas and polar bears and occasionally a ScoobyDoo or the like. During the day, these lay in collapsed nylon heaps all over the neighborhood’s lawns. In the evening they billow and teeter, grinning and undulating and making me wish for a BB gun.
Not in my neighborhood, thankfully
Bad taste abounding
My neighborhood can proudly claim the title of ”Most Lame Christmas Lights in the greater Portland Metro area.” People who are new to the neighborhood usually start out lighting their houses in a tasteful, restrained fashion, with crisp rows of white lights running along the gutters and a pleasing bounty of colored lights on the rhododendrons. Maybe a lighted wreath over the garage door.Here’s a beautifully lit home, in my opinion.
Also not actually in my neighborhood, but you get the idea of what I admire
But there’s some kind of taste drain at work here, so in a couple of years, their houses have gone native–green and red alternating lights on the house instead of white, odd bell-things made of lights showing up in the peaks of the dormers. Then those white lighted reindeer skeletons start cropping the grass and …
Must you, neighbor? Must you?
It’s all over.
We have the standard offenses–the previously mentioned reindeer that look like illuminated reindeer skeletons, big lit crosses, the spiral trees that make me kind of dizzy to look at, the excessive use of hanging icicle lights, those weird light nets that you can put over a bush or a tree if you want it to look like it’s been covered in an illuminated fishnet. But we have some extra-special stuff that I only seem to see around here. Year after year. Honed to an illuminated art form, these displays.
Trunk Wrap
First, there’s the Trunk Wrap. The Trunk Wrap is when lights are tightly wrapped around the trunk of a tree. In an ideal world, the trunk is wrapped, and then the branches, and then a bunch of colorful lights are hung randomly where the leaves of the tree used to be. That’s actually pretty. In our neighborhood, homeowners either run out of energy or lights or both, and so the wrapping goes partly up the trunk and then Joe Suburb says ‘fuckit.’ This results in a bunch of short, lighted trunks with no branches, like all the trees were blasted off in the middle.
Hedge Drip
We also have a lot of the Hedge Drippers. This is when someone drapes colored lights up and down and up and down on a hedge or a bank of arborvitae, somewhat in the manner of how I put mustard on a hotdog when I have a squeeze bottle and I want to be fancy. It looks terrible. Especially when it forms the backdrop for a bunch of Trunk Wrapped trees.
Something new!
This year, we have, of course, the newest lighting craze; a laser projector that shines dancing little squares of lights and eerie floating Christmas tree decorations onto the sides of home and garages. There is one across the street, and it’s always on at 7 AM, when I stand in the dark waiting for T to pick me up and take me downtown. I stand there and watch, repulsed and hypnotized, wondering if I would have liked this thirty years ago, when I was new here, back when I was so painfully excited by any holiday displays.
I do admire people who do something unique, like the peace sign wreaths that are popping up around here. My parents made one in 1971, so it’s not exactly a new idea, but it’s a nice one. My favorite guy in the neighborhood throws all his white plastic deck chairs up on top of one of his trees and drapes them with a bunch of lights. I have no idea why or how he does this. All I know is, every year there’s a big tangle of white plastic chairs and Christmas lights at the top of his oak trees.
So I hope you’re all lit up and ready for the holiday. And it’s pretty.
