Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween

The old Halloween cards stand in stark contrast to the Halloween decorations currently available in stores. I went to look for some decorations, because I want trick-or-treaters to see our house as a welcoming one. Unfortunately, about the only decorations I could find were severed limbs, ghouls with various nasty wounds, huge snarling rats, and plastic gravestones. The gravestones are O.K., but what happened to friendly ghosts, smiling jack-o-lanterns, black cats, and witches on broomsticks?



Here are the backs of the cards in the same order.

The message, sent to Miss Marian Bacon in Marietta, New York in 1922, reads:

Dear Marian,  How are you and Mama + Papa? Are you a good girl? Did you have a Jack O' lantern? It is cold her and has snowed quote a little this week. be a good little girl because Santa will soon be here. Your friend Ella

The second card was sent to Miss Louise Ely in Clyde, New York in 1909.

9 comments:

  1. I wonder that very same thing. And seeing a part of the Zombie Walk on NE Sandy yesterday made me wonder even more.

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  2. Lovely cards, on another note, weren't addresses short back then, amazing how the mail arrived.

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  3. I'm right there with you...I love Halloween SO much, I keep one room (my bedroom) so decorated all year. And yet even I don't enjoy looking for new Halloween stuff much anymore...it's all so gross, so ugly, I can't even bear to look at it. Modern horror movies seem to have gone the same way, as if horror=gore. It's such a limited view of what horror, and Halloween, can be. Anyway, try to have a happy one!

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  4. I couldn’t agree more. It’s become so commercialised now. That first card is lovely. Just the right amount of spookiness.

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  5. Take back Halloween! Just decorate with carved pumpkins and maybe orange fairy lights and pretty things.....oh wait..I digress...I love that second card. Very sweet. Just back from the snowstorm in the east coast where all the pumpkins got covered in snow! Trick or treat?

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  6. Hallo Christine, Ich habe mich ja nun länger nicht gemeldet.
    Ich hoffe es geht dir gut, deine Halloweenkarten sind wie immer bezaubernd.
    Ich wünsche dir ein tolles Fest.
    Liebe Grüsse
    Janine

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  7. I'm with you Christine, Halloween has certainly taken a turn for the worse in the past couple of decades. (further back than that, actually) I sure like your cards, and I don't recall seeing the top one before.

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  8. I have never actually shopped for Halloween decorations, so I didn't know it was so hard to get the old-fashioned happy decorations. There must be someplace to buy them.

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  9. Christine, I agree with you 110% about this creepy side of modern Halloween. WAlked into the bathroom at Taco Del Mar in Hood River and there was a severed foot hanging from the back of the toilet. AAAAggghhh! Glad we have lovely postcards like yours that harken to a sweeter time.

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