Christmas Cards Strike Tart Note This Season : Holidays: Manufacturers are no longer content with traditional settings. They’re poking fun at George Bush, Dan Quayle and the Yuletide spirit.
The Greeting Card Assn. says the trend is to traditional cards--red and green, nostalgic, country, Victorian and religious--and there certainly are more cards available in this spirit than any others.
But if you’re asking what’s really new, it’s a sour note adding dissonance to the Christmas-card carol. This year, politics, obscenity, meanness and general tastelessness are stronger than ever.
Since the cards were mostly designed a year or so ago, many reflect unpleasant feelings left over from the vicious ’88 election campaign, the multitudinous public scams and scandals, the sins in high places and the various pacts with the devil.
Some of the more offensive seem to be published by T. N. T. Designs Inc., Dale Cards and West Graphics Tastefully Tasteless Cards.
But even Recycled Paper Products and--think of this--Hallmark have a few that people of sensitivity might not wish to sign.
And clearly Noble Works of New York is named after the owner, Christopher Noble, certainly not after the sentiments. The self-styled “alternative greeting-card manufacturer” produces cards at the rude and crude end of the humor spectrum. A few don’t beat about the bush, they beat on the Bushes.
For instance, a Noble Works card carries the message: “The President and Mrs. Bush wish you a Kinder, Gentler Holiday Season.” All right. But its cruel caricatures are certainly not K & G. And the inside message is “But Who Cares! Happy Holidays.”
The same company’s “Dan Quayle Jokes” card is also not for Republicans or polite Democrats--the only one of the so-called jokes printable in a family newspaper is: “What’s the difference between Dan Quayle and Jane Fonda?” Answer: “Jane Fonda went to Vietnam.”
Most of the rest of the cards are in equally questionable taste, including another Barbara Bush take-off and one that describes the birth of Christ as a sacrilegious tabloid might.
Gary Larson’s view isn’t exactly designed to bring cheer to the season--unless you consider Santa’s threats to make venison of the reindeer or a chewable mailman for the family dog full of high Christmas sentiments.
A Hartland card by Nadine Bernard Westcott takes us to the reindeer-operated “Goodtime Eggnog Factory” (with the message, “What did you think made those reindeer fly?”). Another Hartland card shows a man, cat and dog, all true Scrooges, being beset by a Christmas spirit.
“Xmas is hell” by Matt Groening may be the most tragic card of the season. The baby monster comes to the Christmas tree covered with presents saying, “This better be good.” Inside the card you see he got one of everything--a sled, a TV, a computer, a motorcycle, etc.--so he weeps for a pull-along duck.
Even men aren’t treated very well on cards this year. Cathy Guisewite’s long-haired Cathy is shown with Santa and the message:
“He had a broad face
“And a round little belly
“That shook when he laughed Like a bowlful of jelly.”
Inside: “My luck with men continues.”
Two men who have doubtless seen better days sit under a fantasy of Christmas bells, with only one beer between them. One says, “Ding,” the other, “Dong.” The inside legend reads, “You’ve Got a Friend! Happy Holidays.” Innovisions of Chicago, the publisher, should send the profit for this one to help the homeless.
Not all the Bush cards are offensive. “Season’s Greetings from The White House,” says the official-looking card flying a VIP, eagle-seal design complete with arrows and olive branches. The disclaimer is on the inside: “It’s not official, of course, but I thought it would look good on your mantel! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”
The nice Dan Quayle card in Technicolor issues this message: “My public-relations team has approved the following statement: ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’ Dan. Signed on his behalf by: (your own name again).”
The most elegant cards of the season are again the architectural pop-ups (no assembly needed) by Ted Naos, a Baltimore architect and a Catholic University associate professor, who led the way in the die-cut card technology.
This year he’s made three dramatic buildings in three-dimensional cards--multiple sections, all of which assemble themselves: a post-modernist house, a wonderful American-architecture fantasy of a Western house intended for a rocky California coastline and a building suggested by the Greek island Santorini, where the Naos family summers.
Old masters paint the most comforting of Christmas cards. UNICEF has hunted up “The Virgin and Child with Two Angels,” ca. 1482, by Matteo di Giovanni; Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld’s “Flight Into Egypt” (1828); Abraham Bloemaert’s golden “Adoration of the Magi” (1624); and Alejandro von Waberer’s “Our Lady of Guadalupe.”
Peace cards are not as numerous as one might expect, because they were made up back when the subject was not as popular as it is now.
Hallmark has two of the more notable of the season--a cutout hand giving the peace sign, and a dove shape sprinkled with silver moonlight. It reads: “May the peace of the Christmas season linger always in your heart.”
Paper Moon Graphics has a monumental-looking dove on a peachy background with the words Peace on high . Inside, the message is “Wishing you a world of peace and joy.” You’d certainly expect UNICEF to fly in peace doves for Christmas, and it has, a handsome white-on-midnight-blue embossed card by the U. S. A.’s Blake Hampton, a fragile dove in flight by Yugoslavia’s Borislav Njezic-Boro and a wreath of white doves on a red background by Denmark’s Lisa Monrad Hansen.
Broom Designs offers pleasant boxed cards that feature blacks. An almost cubistic Nativity scene carries this message: “In this year and all the years that follow may we maintain the courage to stand by our convictions and the patience to work with others.”
Another card sets before Santa the best of soul menus “with mellow blends of cornbread-chitterlings-coleslaw-collard greens & ham hocks . . . don’t forget the black-eyed peas.”
Strange to say, end-of-the-decade cards are scarce; perhaps no one but Boynton had faith we’d make it to Jan. 1, 1990. One of her beasts scatters confetti and carries the message: “A new year. A new decade. Yeee-hah.” Inside is “Best Wishes at the start of our frolic toward the millennium.”
Meantime, for mall marauders, Paper Moon has a collection: a furry cat festooned with shopping bags with the sentiment, “Merry Christmas Daahling”; and “Confessions of a Christmas Shopper--The Desperate Drama of My Conspicuous Consumption of Plastic Products to Make Garish Gifts for Ungrateful Goons.”
The largest variety of animal cards this year comes from the Evergreen Press--delightful drawings of lions, a fine pig and a bull, all beribboned and decorated with mistletoe, by Ching.
Cats and dogs are making many appearances. A charming picture of a boy, girl, cat and dog asleep in an art deco dream of candles and stars comes from a 1922 London book with paintings and text by children younger than 16, from the Winterthur Museum and Gardens collection.
And finally comes “Rappin’ Christmas Presents” by John Long for Paper Moon: “Right now we look pretty and ready for fun . . . Soon you’ll open us up-one by one . . . You’ll rip us and tear us, it’s over in a flash . . . Come tomorrow our pretty paper’s out in the trash!”
“Just a Little Note
“From Us to Say
“Get Down and Have Yourself a Happy Holiday.”