Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by Artsy Reader Girl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share a love of all things books! I love thinking up my responses and the weekly blog hop to see what everyone else wrote!

I’ve had a stressful couple of weeks with work, and I am backed up with 2 book reviews to write, so I wanted to give myself an easy and fun prompt for this week’s December Freebie. I was clearing out my old saved archives in Instapaper the other day and came across an article I’d saved (years ago!) on weird Victorian Christmas cards. These made me laugh, and are very thematic for December and my current efforts to record and save fun images for future embroidery inspiration! Perfect.

I had a search around the internet for my personal favourite weird Victorian Christmas cards! Many came from this fun old BBC article, Frog murder and boiled children: ‘Merry Christmas’ Victorian style, and the Guardian article I’d saved: Shock of the old: 11 murderous and macabre Victorian Christmas cards. This Bored Panda post has 57 of them to enjoy.

My original intention was to give the photo credits for these images, for which Archives they presumably came from, but I quickly realised the internet is the wild fucking west for this kind of thing, and I simply could not find that information! I didn’t want to waste an afternoon trawling Google image search results. The BBC didn’t say where they got their images from, but the Guardian does provide photo credits. A few of them are available as prints from Mary Events Picture Library, which I am definitely bookmarking!

I did find a lot of rather lazy repost “articles” ripped from the original BBC one, which also just made me tired.I guess I’m kind of doing the same thing here… but this is just for my own fun!

Anyway, these are my personal favourite Victorian Christmas cards. They’re so delightfully weird and creepy, and many seem rather violently antithetical to the “Christmas spirit” which really cracks me up.

1. Frog murder

This one really paints a scene, but it raises a lot of questions. Did the live frog kill the dead frog himself? Did he steal that bag of (presumably) £2,000 from him? Or were both frogs involved in some kind of robbery gone awry? Why is the dead frog “naked” but the one fleeing the scene is dressed in trousers and a wastecoat?

2. Dead Robin

Maybe he’s just sleeping? …. his feet sure do look limp though… Perhaps the intended audience for this one is cats? Or people who really hate robins?

3. A bearly welcome

The artist really got a lot of expression and movement into this one. The blood around the bear’s mouth is a great detail.

4. Mutant parsnip man?

This might actually be my favourite. I think the “body” is a black parsnip; it certainly is some kind of root vegetable. The tablet/card he is holding looks like a heart-shaped parsnip, so I guess parsnip. Anyway, it is horrifying but also quite jaunty. The head is looking very elegant in its top hat and monocle, and with the gentleman’s cane. Unhinged, I love it.

5. Child pie

I don’t even know what to say about this one! I know even today there is a subset of people who love this kind of kitchy cherub stuff, but I find it very creepy!

6. Broken egg child

I don’t understand what is going on with this one. The left leg looks like it is coming out of the cracked egg, but that does not appear to be the case for the other limbs. Plus, there is a big hole where presumably the head would be if this is a child trapped inside a giant egg. If we were to think the head is somehow still inside the egg, then the arms are far too high up! Also, why is it only wearing one sock?

7. Who’s afraid?

I really enjoy the implied threat here, in what is otherwise an innocent-looking scene. Who is it that is, or should be, afraid here? I could make a case of either of these being a psycho with their cold, black, beady little eyes.

8. Sparrow uprising

These birds look like they have a purpose that feels politically charged, and once again, I enjoy the implied threat.

9. One good turn deserves another

The most distressing thing about this one is that the turkeys are already plucked! Where they live plucked?! Are they somehow zombie turkeys that reanimated in the kitchen as this chef was preparing them? I don’t even know where to start with the beef/lamb joint that has human legs and arms and a massive, creepy face (and slides on its feed).. and the moon man?! Are they maybe magic creatures that have reanimated the turkeys?

10. Mouse riding lobster

It is an unusual combination – a land mammal riding a sea creature on land. I did just do a quick search and learned that lobsters can survive out of water for 24-48 hours, but still, it seems very unlikely and cruel.

Which one is your favourite?