Vintage New Year Cards Doled Out Humor

Vintage New Year Cards doled out 19^th century humor. While some of these images ring a familiar bell, others are as weird as an AI hallucination. Since people have celebrated the New Year for millennia, it’s no surprise that many of the same customs and themes emerge year after year.

Because humor depends on context, geographic location and culture, some of these images are inexplicable to us. Still, they made our great ancestors laugh – or at least some of them.

Following are a few of our favorite snarky Vintage New Year Cards.

Victorian New Year Cards. Image: CardCow.

Vintage New Year Cards:Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1890. Image: Wikimedia.

Vintage New Year Cards: Image: Circa 1890s. Wikimedia.

Vintage New Year Cards: Image: Norwegian Politicians and Celebrities; Circa 1890s. National Library of Norway/Wikimedia.

Vintage New Year Cards: Image: Circa 1890s. Wikimedia.

Victorian New Year Cards. Image: Wikimedia.

Victorian New Year Cards. Image: CardCow.

Vintage New Year Cards. Image: Wikimedia.

Humor Changes With Time

These Vintage New Year Cards are decidedly from another time. Even so, the humor rings as true as the midnight gong on New Year’s Eve.

Humor can be sophisticated or silly, cerebral or physical. And of course, humor is a matter of personal taste. At its core, humor involves a person’s ability to detect and create incongruities.

Christopher A. Robert, Ph.D. writes for Psychology Today :

“Among our ancient ancestors, the incongruity might have been between behavior that looked like fighting, but which was understood as non-serious or “play” behavior because it was accompanied by cues such as laugh-like sounds. But as our cognitive abilities have progressed, in parallel with language abilities, so too has our ability to create and appreciate more complex and sophisticated incongruities.”(Psychology Today)

Silly Or Not, These Images Were On The Leading Edge

While the incongruities might seem strange, these Vintage New Year Cards were decidedly cutting-edge for their day. By the mid-1800s a sea change was underway in printing. According to MetroPostcard:

“Small shops that had long dominated the printing trades began to be overtaken by a large scale industry made possible by new steam powered cylinder and platen presses. Even the practice of making sheets of paper by hand gave way to long webs manufactured by machine.”

Lithography was becoming commonplace. People were experimenting with photography and other emerging techniques in print. Chromolithography was one of the most successful techniques with its rich four-color prints.

“The development of the photo gelatin process would grow to play a major role in the printing of postcards that continued well into the 20th century.”

Combine a growing middle class that had discretionary income with trendy scrapbooking and holiday cards emerged as a new industry.

The Black Penny featuring Queen Victoria, was the first adhesive postage stamp. When it was introduced in the 1870s, sending Christmas cards and these vintage New Year Cards became the rage. By the late 1800s to early 1900s, people sent greetings for every holiday. Yes, there were lots of adorably sweet cards for every holiday. But there were plenty of choices for those whose tastes leaned to the dark side of the aisle. Victorian Christmas cards included children boiling in soup tureens and murderous frogs. Vinegar Valentines delivered stinging insults. Quirky Easter cards featured injured rabbits returning from war and cheating chicks. It’s no surprise that Vintage July Fourth Cards also packed a fiery punch with surprisingly off-color firecracker humor.

Here’s One From The New Year of 1890

This Vintage New Card is from the year that Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland were on ships heading in opposite directions in their race to be the fictional record Around The World in Eighty Days.

Bly was aboard the Oceanic, somewhere between Hong Kong and Yokohama on her way to San Francisco. Meanwhile, Bisland spent the day in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) before continuing on her westward course. Although in separate places, both celebrated the Victorian New Year of 1889 on their roads to fame.

Vintage New Year Cards:Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1890. Image: Wikimedia.

While Bisland and Bly were optimistic about the outcome of their race, many people were happy to kiss the year goodbye.

The unprecedented levels of production in domestic manufacturing and commercial agriculture during the 1880s strengthened the American economy. According to lumenLearning

“The Industrial Revolution resulted in greater wealth and a larger population in Europe as well as in the United States.”

Even so, the worldwide recession, sometimes called the Long Depression, started in 1873 and continued for several years. Based on these Vintage New Year Cards, there was still plenty of suffering to go around by the end of the 1880s. People were grateful to open their doors to 1890 while kicking 1889 out the window.

Vintage New Year Cards:Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1890. Image: Wikimedia.

Victorian New Year Cards; Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1890. Image: Wikimedia.

Vintage New Year Cards:Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, 1890. Image: Wikimedia.

Women Took Brooms To Drunken Husbands

This is probably one of those timeless themes. Yes, it has a decided edge in these vintage New Year Cards.

Victorian New Year Cards. Image: CardCow.

Pigs And Other Symbols of Good Fortune Were Always Popular

The popularity of Lucky Victorian Pigs blossomed in the 1800s. As symbols of good luck in a New Year, they were pictured on cards, jewelry, ornaments and candies. But pigs were not exactly new to good fortune.

As symbols of good luck, pigs go back at least to the Middle Ages. From a practical standpoint, owning pigs meant a person was prosperous and would never go hungry. From a symbolic standpoint, turkeys forage by kicking backwards while pigs root forward. That translates into abundance in the future.

Many popular piggy expressions reflect the association of pigs with happiness, financial prosperity and good luck. Included in the list are: happy as a pig in the mire, in the mud or in the clover’, and ‘you lucky pig.’

More About Good Luck Pigs here.

Victorian New Year Cards. Image: Wikimedia.

Lucky Victorian Pigs, 1904. Image: Wikipedia.

Vintage New Year Cards Made Good Business Sense

The back of this New Year Ad reads:

“Please accept our thanks for your past patronage and we solicit your future favors which will be highly appreciated by yours most respectfully, Anthracite Bedding Manufacturing Co. Complete Bedroom Outfitters 100 South Main Street Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Attend our inventory sale which will commence Monday, Jan. 3, 1910.”