Another Year, Another Weird Victorian New Year Greeting Cards

In Victorian England, Christmas cards were relatively new (introduced in the 1840s), and sending New Year’s greetings became a playful extension of this tradition. The New Year was less tied to strict religious themes, allowing for more creativity and humor. Cards were a way to stay connected with distant friends and family, and unusual designs made the messages more memorable.

Victorian New Year’s cards often featured bizarre imagery that seems strange to modern eyes. These cards, popular in the late 19th century, were known for their peculiar combinations of sentimentality, whimsy, and outright oddity.

Victorian society was highly superstitious, and many of the strange images on New Year’s cards had symbolic meanings tied to luck, prosperity, and good fortune. For example: pigs symbolized wealth and abundance; frogs were thought to bring transformation and renewal. Anthropomorphic animals or objects added a playful charm to these symbols of luck, making them both entertaining and meaningful.

The weird Victorian New Year cards were an outgrowth of the era’s love for novelty, humor, and symbolic imagery, combined with advancements in printing that enabled artists to explore the fantastical. While they might seem odd to modern sensibilities, they were a charming and entertaining way to convey heartfelt wishes for the year ahead.

Wishing you a bright and glad new year – unless you’re a fox, in which case we’ll rip you to shreds.

What the heck dinosaurs examining a picture of a man has to do with “compliments of the season” beats me.

Here’s one that some of us might relate to, a man afflicted with various maladies. Happy, happy!

Take this, old man! Become vegetarian, or else!

What’s with the frogs in Victorian cards? These three are bowling towards a clock striking midnight, using mushrooms as pins.

Hi, I’m Satan!

Polar bear having an Inuit entree for supper. Yum, yum.

Woman making boy soup for supper. Note the legs of another child sticking out of the kettle.

Roast rat for the elves.

Rats are apparently very useful to elves for food and transportation.

The tables turned: rats eat cat, with new potatoes on the side.

Hairy root vegetable wishes you a happy new year.

Fly away! The new year spider is out to devour you.

Ready to take a train to oblivion? They were in 1889.