Christopher Philippo's Blog: Christmas Ghost Stories and Horror, page 3

The Ghost of the Old Year (1909)

Frank Lebby Stanton (1857-1927) had been poet laureate of Georgia, and wrote a considerable amount of dreadful dialect poetry—including Christmas poems. Some of his poems featured ghosts, as here - a poem that is NOT in dialect, thankfully. New Year's ghost stories don't seem to have been especially common, but there were some. Both New Year's Eve and New Year's Day fall within the Twelve Days of Christmas so would remain a good time for them in general.

[From the Atlanta Constitution]
I.
He was dreaming of the New Year resolutions he would make
And frame in costly fashion—toobeautiful to break;
But—"Who are you?" he shouted, as he rose from troubled sleep,
And saw an awful shadow from a chilly corner creep.
"I'm the ghost," the shadow answered, in the iron tones of Fate.
"Of the New Year's resolution that you made in 1908!
II.
"You see me—how I'm limping? How the light of life I lack?
You let me fail,—remember?—and the tumble broke my back!
You mended me—you patched me here and there, while seasons fled,
But I'm armless, and I'm legless and like you, I lost my head!"
III.
Then the New Year resolutionist he wept him bitter tears
As he thought of—him as only one of wrecks of ruined years;
And he waltzed toward the sideboard, where decanters met his view,
With—"For old times' sake, old fellow, here's a New Year health to you!"
FRANK L. STANTON.
Baltimore American [MD]. January 1, 1909: 7.

We Shall Never See the Like Again (1827)

The oldest poems or songs I found from the 19th century referencing Christmas ghost storytelling were both published in 1827. The first below was apparently reprinted so few times that it was possible to list all the instances found. Edwin Lees' "Signs of Christmas" was reprinted often, and continued to be republished about a hundred years later. Christmas ghost poems would feature through the entire Victorian period.

WE SHALL NEVER SEE THE LIKE AGAIN.

Our ancient English melodies,
Are banish'd out of doors,
And nothing's heard in modern days,
But Signoras and Signors.
Such airs I hate like a pig in a gate,
Give me the good old strain,
‘O tis merry in the hall when the beards wag all:’
We shall never see the like again,
We shall never, &c.

On beds of down our dandies lay,
And slumber out the morn,
While their sires of old they wak’d the day
With the sound of the bugle horn;
And their wives took care to provide good fare
When they had left the plain—
O ’twas merry in the hall, &c.

O then the merry tale went round
Of goblin, ghost, or fairy,
While they cheer'd the hearts of their tenants all
With a cup of good canary;
Or each took a smack of the coal-black jack,
While the fire burnt in their brain—
O ’twas merry in the hall, &c.
Rayner, Barnabas. F. J. Duncombe's Correct Edition. Mr. Rayner's Popular Entertainment of Up to Town and Back Again, Etc. London, 1827.
The Quaver, or Songster’s Pocket Companion. London: Charles Jones, 1844. 249-250. [As “’Twas Merry in the Hall,” with some differences, including the substitution of “Christmas tale” for “merry tale.”]
Osbourn, James G., ed. The Singer's Souvenir: Containing a Choice Selection of the Most Popular Fashionable Songs, Duetts and Glees, as Sung at the Musical Festivals, Fashionable Assemblies, Theatres and Concerts. NY: Richard Marsh, 1854. 194.
Logan, William Hugh, ed. A Pedlar's Pack of Ballads and Songs With Illustrative Notes. Edinburgh: William Paterson, 1869. 250-252.

Signs of Christmas (1827)

When on the barn's thatch'd roof is seen
The moss in tufts of liveliest green;
When Roger to the wood pile goes,
And as he turns, his fingers blows;
When all around is cold and drear,
Be sure that CHRISTMAS-TIDE is near.

When up the garden walk in vain
We seek for Flora's lovely train;
When the sweet hawthorn bower is bare,
And bleak and cheerless is the air;
When all seems desolate around,
CHRISTMAS advances o'er the ground.

When Tom at eve comes home from plough,
And brings the mistletoe’s green bough,
With milk-white berries spotted o’er,
And shakes it the sly maids before,
Then hangs the trophy up on high,
Be sure that CHRISTMAS-TIDE is nigh.

When Hal, the woodman, in his clogs,
Bears home the huge unwieldy logs,
That, hissing on the smould’ring fire,
Flame out at last a quiv’ring spire;
When in his hat the holly stands,
Old CHRISTMAS musters up his bands.

When cluster’d round the fire at night,
Old William talks of ghost and sprite,
And as a distant out-house gate
Slams by the wind, they fearful wait,
While some each shadowy nook explore,
Then CHRISTMAS pauses at the door.

When Dick comes shiv'ring from the yard
And says the pond is frozen hard,
While from his hat, all white with snow,
The moisture trickling drops below;
While carols sound, the night to cheer,
Then CHRISTMAS and his train are here.

Lees, Edwin. Christmas and the New Year: A Masque, for the Fire-Side. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1827. 10-11.
Christmas in Poetry Carols and Poems Chosen by a Committee of the Carnegie Library School Association. NY: H. W. Wilson Co., 1923. 12-13.

Christmas ghost jokes

The Victorians could be very witty, so these maybe aren't the best examples....

THE MOANING MARQUIS.—First Christmas Ghost: How d’ye do—how’s business?—Second Ditto (White Lady of Crumpett Castle): Oh, very slow. Things are not what they used to be. I think I shall learn typewriting, and go as an editor’s spook. That pays very well now, I’m told.
“Facts and Fancies.” South Wales Echo. January 26, 1894: 4 col 4.

RIDDLES, PUZZLES, AND CONUMDRUMS. [...]
Why are the bones in your back like a Christmas ghost?
Shepton Mallet Journal. December 21, 1894: 2 col 3.

Because you have never seen one.
Shepton Mallet Journal. December 28, 1894: 3 col 1.

Australian Christmas ghost stories (1907)

The poem in the previous post wasn't an isolated case. Australians did write Christmas ghost stories and poems too, aside from reprinting ones from England. Some Australians also came to have the same complaints as some of the English: that the stories were becoming too sordid for their liking.

GRUESOME CHRISTMAS STORIES.
—
BY E. C. MORRICE.
—
"Joyousness must be the Christmas Note," says our friend, the editor of the "Sydney Mail," in this "Answer to Literary Correspondents," and doubtless most of us will agree with him. Why, then, is it that so much of the Christmas literature is of a gruesome and gloomy character? Ghosts, murders, suicides, and other horrors prevail in the greater part of English Christmas stories, and Australian magazines and papers have, with a few exceptions, the same preference for tragic and grisly tales in their Christmas numbers.
Is it because the subjects of charity, forgiveness, and reconciliation are too trite, and require the contrast of hatred, revenge, and sin? Is it that our holiday exuberance requires toning down by depressing literature? Must Christmas stories be maudlin or morbid?
No one will deny that writers who have the ability, to depict the dark and seamy side of life, or the mysteries of the supernatural, are justified in using their gift, and that there are some readers who appreciate this kind of writing. But why should the time of peace, goodwill, and joyfulness be specially chosen for reminding us of the evils of humanity, or bringing before us the gruesomeness of spectral belief?
I have often pondered over this problem, and the other day I found what appeared to me a key to the mystery, as far as English literature is concerned. A critic in the "Sketch," reviewing a book called "Ferriby," by Mrs. Vere Campbell, writes that in contains enough thrills to send even the fairy tale prince who found it so hard to shiver, trembling to bed. He adds that a sequel seems to be promised, and that this "ought to come in time for Christmas gatherings, and be read while the wind whistles in the chimney."
That is it. The long, dark winter nights at English Christmastide; the falling snow; the howling gale, shrieking like a banshee round the house; the flames leaping merrily in the fireplace, casting dancing lights and deepening shadows in the room. The Christmas revellers ready after a joyous meal to sit round the hearth listening to stories sending thrills down their spine. The ancient English mansion, the family ghost connected with age-stained family portraits, the large house-party, with punch, snapdragon, and mistletoe, the grim corridors and haunted room, these are the adjuncts and surroundings for the gruesome Christmas stories.
But in our sunny land, where Christmas falls in the brightest time of the year, mid-summer, under azure skies and balmy nights, amid the song of birds and scent of flowers, with people ready for fun and frolic, ready to relieve suffering, but desirous to forget their own troubles for a short time in merrymaking, here it seems to me that gloomy and ghostly Yuletide tales are out of place. Let us have pathos, if it is not sickly—even tragedy if it ends in a satisfactory manner—but away with horrors, real or supernatural, in our Christmas numbers, which should be, to my idea, in accordance with the spirit of the most gracious holiday of our sun-bathed country.
Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser. December 25, 1907.

Christmas puddings too freely indulged in are disastrous to the physical constitution, Christmas literature greedily absorbed is ruinous to the mental condition. Why ghosts and other (non)entities which smell of the tomb should be considered specially suitable for the literature of the season, is one of the few remaining mysteries which have been handed down the ages, but Australian writers, forced thereto by the necessities of the casual contributor, continue to keep up the Christmas ghost fiction, and it is difficult to say which is the more nauseous, the Australian Christmas ghost story which makes its appearance in mid-December, or the morbid Australian yard which appears in the "Bulletin," and the "Bulletin's" slavish imitators throughout this Horsetralian life everlasting. After having made a praiseworth attempt to read the Christmas numbers of A.D. 1907, it is a blessed relief to turn to the "Christmas Tales" of DIckens A.D. 1840, and, pausing occasionally after reading one of his lifelike descriptions, to look up and appear to see it painted on the wall. Such fancy pictures make a wholesome sort of ghostly vision; the morbid drooping and sickly melancholy of 19th century christmas literature cannot even create an honest nightmare.
Truth [Brisbane, Queensland]. December 29, 1907: 8.

Old Father Christmas (1917)

Poet and author HELENA MABEL MILLS CHECKLEY FORREST (1872-1935) was Australian and one of her novels was adapted into a film there, The Moth of Moonbi (1926), but she was regularly published in American magazines as well.

World War I had begun July 28th, 1914; the United States entered on April 6th, 1917; the war not ending until November 11, 1918. The poem first appeared in the December 1917 issue of the Chicago-based Cartoons Magazine and was reprinted in a few American newspapers during 1917-18.

M. Forrest

OLD FATHER CHRISTMAS, 1917

You are not rotund as you used to be
With a big beard sweeping an ample chest
And your cheeks so rosy and so full
And a holly wreath…be it confes’t
Hangs oddly…on a skull…

Instead of a reindeer, for a steed
You’ve a spectral steed with a funeral walk
And a gaunt gray wolf behind you moves,
And all his larder’s leanness proves,
With only bones to stalk!

And over your head for mistletoe
A vulture—blown on an evil breath!
I like you not in your present mood,
Your wassail bowl has a reek of blood
And your jests…are grim as death!

The Christmas Clown (1862)

While Christmas ghost stories were arguably appreciated in the United States almost as much as in the UK, it may be that Christmas clowns were limited to England where they were a feature of the annual theatrical pantomimes.

The Christmas Clown.
A TRUE TALE.

Side-splitting jester! Merry Christmas mime,
Whose pranks enliven dreary Winter time,
At whose approach vanish a tear or frown!
What can resist the merry, tumbling Clown,
Or dear old Pantaloon, who wakes his store
Of thwacks contentedly, as erst of yore.
Well I remember how, with wicked leer,
Beneath the young girls’ bonnets he would peer;
Ready abettor of that naughty Clown,
Where to steal “sausage” or knock “bobby” down,
While to frustrate their schemes would e’er combine
Gay Harlequin and graceful Columbine.
But here stern Truth a while retards my task,
And bids me peep beneath the laughing mask.
Alas! the comic leer, the arch grimace,
Do often cover a care-haunted face!
Well I recall one long-past Christmas time,
With others witnessing a Pantomime;
Up went the curtain, and disclosed to view,
Of course, the usual motley, grisly crew—
Man-eating giants, goblins, mocking imps,
Maidens forlorn, preserved by fairy nymphs;
Until at last the wished-for time drew near
For that arch jester, merry Clown, t’ appear.
This Clown a daughter had, his only child,
Some thirteen Summers since her birth had smiled,
Tho’ weak and sickly, still her Father’s pride;
Well, on this very night the child had died.
* * * * *
A Mother’s care poor Lucy ne’er had known,
That Mother giving life resigned her own;
Not only life from her—the infant drew
Its fatal heritage—Consumption too!
The Father’s fond heart would not notice how
The gloom of death was shading that young brow;
He to the Playhouse from his home is gone,
And the poor ailing child is left alone.
* * * * *
Behold the Clown now duly patch’d and drest,
Devising for his entrance some droll jest,
His face besmeared with ochres white and red—
When news is brought him that his child is dead!
Silent awhile the wretched Father stands,
Hiding his features with his trembling hands;
Although his tortured bosom finds relief,
And hollow moans and sobs proclaim his grief;
His mouth distorted with a painted grin,
Seems mockery of the anguish felt within.
A few moments pass—the footlights he’s before,
And all the audience are in a roar.
* * * * *
Alas! poor Clown, thy misery had I known,
But small the mirth that night I should have shown;
For sorely my young heart would have been aching,
To think of thine, poor fellow! before me breaking!
E. C., Comedian, Nottingham.
Alas! poor Clown, thy misery had I known,
The Era [London, UK]. January 19, 1862: 11 col 1.

African-Americans and Victorian Christmas ghost stories

I'd noted in the introduction to the book, "It was not hard to find stories and poems by women; the prevalence of their ghost stories has long been observed. It was hard to find ones by authors who weren’t white." (In the period of time from the beginning of the Victoria era in 1837 to the US entry into World War I in 1917, that is.)

Obviously, for a large part of that time frame low literacy rates for Black people in the US due in large part to slavery and anti-literacy laws kept authorship of *anything* pretty limited. However, I had thought in the later decades that it would be possible to find some examples. I searched in collections of stories by African-Americans and in African-American periodicals; used subject, keyword, Boolean searches; put out inquiries.

For the most part, I turned up more examples of white authors writing poems or stories in so-called "negro dialect" than any actually written by African-Americans. Perhaps some anonymous pieces were by Black people; it could have been a way to get published by any papers that might not have knowingly published Black authors. There would seem to be no way to determine the author of such an anonymous poem or story, though.

Aside from the few credited examples I found, and broad traditions somewhat in the same line, I also found some stories and poems by white authors that were republished in African-American newspapers—stories and poems that did not make any pretense of being authored by Black people. E.g.: "The Little Match Girl," who had ghostly visions before her death, and a poem inspired by the story:

• Andersen, Hans Christian. "The Little Match Girl.” The North Star [Rochester, NY]. April 13, 1849: 4.
• Wynne, Shirley. "When the Bells Were Ringing." Afro-American Sentinel [Omaha, NE]. December 18, 1897: 3.

Also, at least two newspapers had printed a story by Eugene Field (1850-1895), an author known especially for "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night/sailed off in a wooden shoe." In Field's story, toys came to life around Christmas, and complained about their treatment by a little girl. When "Santa Claus' boy" shows up to deliver presents instead of Santa, the toys took advantage of the fact. The Jumping Jack claimed that the candy was for him, and the paint (meant to be a new coat for him) was for the little girl. The girl gets an application of magic paint and a string attached, and for a year she becomes a pullstring-operated girl/toy hybrid monstrosity until Santa Claus fixes everything on the next Christmas. Cheery!

The story appeared in a number of newspapers over 1887-1890 or so, so these appearances were not unique to African-American newspapers. It does not seem to have been included in any of Field's books.

• Field, Eugene. “A Timely Tale Told on Christmas Eve.” The Freeman [Indianapolis, IN]. December 21, 1889: 8.
• Field, Eugene. “The Evil Jumping Jack." Leavenworth Advocate [KS]. December 20, 1890: 1. [Same story as above.]

Aside from those, one can at least find evidence of a familiarity with Charles Dickens' Christmas stories. E.g. there was a favorable comment in Frederick Douglass' newspaper:

CHRISTMAS NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLD WORDS. These "stories by the Christmas fire," are from the pen of Charles Dickens. Some we have read, and some we have not read; but all we mean to read, for we always expect great things of Mr. Dickens, and are rarely disappointed.
The North Star [Rochester, NY]. February 3, 1854: 3.

There’s a few African-American ghost story collections that I’d found (not Christmas-related), as well as articles on the subject, mostly sourced from or concerning the Work Projects Administration's Federal Writers Project collection of slave narratives. Many of the books are for younger readers. The narratives are not without issues, given the passage of time and complexities regarding how forthcoming people who formerly had been enslaved might have been with government interviewers, particularly with white ones—quite understandably so.

• Gorn, Elliott J. “Black Spirits: The Ghostlore of Afro-American Slaves.” American Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 4, 1984, pp. 549–565. JSTOR.
Onion, Rebecca. "Is the Greatest Collection of Slave Narratives Tainted by Racism?." Slate. July 6, 2016.

• Haskins, James, and Ben Otero. The Headless Haunt and Other African-American Ghost Stories./a>< HarperTrophy, 1995
• Lyons, Mary E. Raw Head, Bloody Bones: African-American Tales of the Supernatural . Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1991.
• Rhyne, Nancy. Slave Ghost Stories: Tales of Hags, Hants, Ghosts & Diamondback Rattlers . Sandlapper, 2002.

Mostly if not all Southern. Aside from those, a lot of books with folktales or folklore in the titles. In a somewhat different category, a recent book looking at ghost tours and how African-Americans are represented in those:

• Miles, Tiya. Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era. North Carolina UP, 2017.

Also of some interest is a book that has some African-American Victorian Christmas stories, though none featuring ghosts:

• Collier-Thomas, Bettye, ed. A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories. Boston Beacon Press, 2018.

Returning to the aforementioned traditions, respecting Junkanoo there's a colorful and clearly heartfelt children's book concerning it:

• Smalls, Irene, and Melodye Rosales. Irene Jennie and the Christmas Masquerade. the Johnkankus. Little, Brown and Company, 1996. [It an be borrowed at the Internet Archive .]

It emphasizes the celebratory aspects of the holiday, not anything that might be intentionally scary or that might be scary to a child not understanding the masks, horns, and so on (as even Santa Claus can be for some little ones). There's an author's note describing some history of it and sources used. The story centers African-American life and culture. Slavery is mentioned periodically throughout: having to prepare food for "the big house," family being separated and subject to slaveholders' whims as to whether they could stop labor and see each other—it being a Christmas children's book, the family in it is able to meet.

The idea that Christmas was universally a happy time for African-Americans during slavery is examined and debunked in a recent book worth reading:

• May, Robert E. Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory . Virginia UP, 2019.

The Legend of St. Nicholas (1842)

I'd hoped to include in the book some version of St Nicholas and the pickled boys, but hadn't found any Victorian-era stories or poems in English by Americans.

One old poem/song that has been translated into English from French can be found within a section titled "Chansons Crinoline (About 1830)" within a book of songs sung by Yvette Guilbert. It is a translation of "La Légende de St. Nicholas," and somewhat unusually alters the gender of the children. The translation was by John N. Raphael, himself an author of an intriguing-sounding sci-fi/horror novel Up Above inspired by the weird novel by Jules Renard Le Peril Blue as noted by the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction .

An older French song (ca. 1600s!), translated into English as "Lament of the Children in the Salting Tub" can be found on the website of the St. Nicholas Center.

The Legend of St. Nicholas

Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled out to the fields alone,
All toddled off to a butcher man,
"Butcher, a bed for the night if you can ?"
"Certainly, certainly, in with all three,
I can find beds for the lot of ye.''
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

Scarce were they all in the butcher's shop
Than into the salting tub, lid a-top,
All three were chopped into pieces small,
Baby Joan, Esmé and Elsie and all.
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

Seven years later St. Nicholas passed,
Rapped on the butcher man's door at last;
"Butcher man, say, can you put me up ?"
"Aye, that can I, man ! Come in and sup."
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

"What's there for supper, now, butcher man ?
Say, shall I guess it, if guess it I can ?
Piglings in pickle for seven long years ?
Butcher, but those must be guilty fears !''
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

For as the saint spoke the words aloud
Off to the fields ran the butcher proud,
"Back with you, man," cried the saint,
"and see, Repent, and God may yet pardon thee.''
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

Burly St. Nicholas sat beside
The great big tub, and he peeped inside,
Rapped on the lid with his fingers three
Then, "Out with you, children, and chat with me !''
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.

Elsie jumped up and danced round and round ;
Esmé said : "Oh, I have slept so sound,"
Baby Joan climbed on the good saint's knee,
"Angels,'' she lisped, "sang so sweet to me.''
Elsie and Esmé and Baby Joan
All toddled off to the fields alone.
Raphael, John Nathan, trans. Madame Yvette Guilbert's French Songs (Old and New). [NY] Metropolitan Print. Co., 1909?

A Search for Santa Claus (1897)

An example of a subgenre of Christmas poetry Victorians had really liked, what I've been calling the "miraculous Christmas death" for lack of a better term. Think, for example, "The Little Match Girl" by Hans Christian Andersen.

A SEARCH FOR SANTA CLAUS.
—
A bitter night—a squalid street
	A basement bleak and bare.
A hungry child with bleeding feet
	Alone sat waiting there
All day amid the surging throng.
	She'd wandered far and near—
All day had sung a feeble song
	That none had paused to hear.

But as she sang she caught the name
	Of Santa Claus, and how
On Christmas night he often came
	To hungry children now.
And so she waited in the dark
	For Santa Claus to come
Till in her breast the feeble spark
	Of hope grew faint and numb.

She thought because she had no light
	He failed to bring her share,
And crept at last into the night
	To lead the good saint there.
And Christmas morning came, and lo!
	Her dead face smiled, because
Amid a whirling drift of snow
Her little weary soul, I know,
	Had found its Santa Claus.
Omaha Daily Bee [NE]. December 19, 1897: 20 col 3. [Citing New York Herald.]

horrific Victorian Christmas cards

The book Christmas Curiosities: Old, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas by John Grossman and the website/podcast Weird Christmas have both shared a number of strange, even horrific Christmas cards: bugs and dead birds, among other things. Grossman speculated it had something to do with Medieval and later Christian traditions about animals kneeling, speaking, and praying at midnight on Christmas Eve in honor of Jesus' birth. The generally secular activities the animals are depicted in makes that seem a stretch. Goodman's additional thought that possibly "bugs were thought of as just another part of the fairy world that had been so popular in painting and illustration in England at the time" has more merit.

Another explanation that strikes me as stronger still:

“I think it’s important to understand that ‘festive’ cards as we know them now are very much a 20th-century phenomena,” says Katie Brown, assistant curator of social history at York Castle Museum. According to Brown, although some of the history is lost, designs were made to serve as conversation pieces as much as they were made to celebrate the season. Many Victorian Christmas cards became parlor art or people added them to their scrapbook collections.
Ponti, Crystal. "Some of the Earliest Christmas Cards Were Morbid and Creepy." History. December 16, 2019. https://www.history.com/news/victorian-christmas-cards

Some of what Katie Brown mentions can be found in old newspaper articles reviewing the new Christmas cards of the season:

Mr. C. CASWELL, of 200, Broad-street, Birmingham, issues a beautiful series of cards. "Christmas Sunshine," Nos. 1 and 2, with designs by the Baroness Helga von Cramm, and mottoes by Miss Havergal; the "Excelsior," and other specimens (especially the Swiss views), are very effective. There is nothing commonplace about these samples, which will bear favourable comparison with any of those from the American and Paris manufactories. Mr. CASWELL's large cards for wall-decoration are really beautiful—they ought to give "an upward tendency" to the picture-frame trade; for no one who receives a Christmas card in this shape will be able to resist the temptation of placing it under glass, so as to remain "a thing of beauty and a joy for ever." […]
Messrs, EYRE and SPOTTISWOODE'S (the Queen's printers, Great New-street, Fetter-lane) new issues of Christmas and New Year's Cards are quite equal to anything of the class we have seen this season, either in variety, artistic conception, or novelty and beauty of design. We can only mention a few of the gems of the collection. […] Greetings from the Backwoods (No. 254) consists of four curious original representations of insect life.
Derby Mercury. December 17, 1879: 6 cols 3-4.

Christmas cards are nowadays works of art. The list sent me of Marcus stone's productions comprises a wide range of subjects and designs. This firm is noted for the production of high art cards of exquisite finish. I hope to detail some productions next week. Raphael Tuck has outdone himself this year. "The Royal Circle at Windsor," taking in four generations, makes a fine card in artistic colouring, about 11in. by 7in. square. This is accompanied by a key. Everyone ought to possess such a memorial of this Jubilee year. "A Porcelain Study of a Roadside Inn in South Devon," by Albert Bowers, is soft and lovely; so are also the six designs by Allan Barrand of landscape topics. Then there are lovely birds, gorgeous insects and animals studies in infinite variety—all worthy of preservation, many of framing. The Raphael panel is in various sizes. This panel was produced at great expense, and is worthy of a place in any library.
Cheltenham Examiner. November 23, 1887: 2 col 5.

Of course, Victorians also just liked bugs a lot:

CHRISTMAS BOOKS.—No. V.
—
In Spider Spinnings (Routledge and Sons), we have a tale of adventures in insect land, where insect life is described from the insect point of view. This story has a good purpose in view besides that of amusing its readers—the purpose of leading children to refrain from thoughtless cruelty even to insects.
London Evening Standard. December 21, 1870: 2 cols 5-6.

CHRISTMAS BOOKS
IV. […]
"Jenny and the Insects" (T. Nelson and Sons)—is suitable for younger children. Here the insects are made to carry on imaginary conversations with "Jenny." The book is clever in its way, and is made doubly attractive by the numerous beautiful illustrations by Giacomelli.
The Graphic. November 20 1880: 3 col 2.

Kohlt, Franziska. "Creepy Victorians: How nineteenth century Britain became obsessed with insects." National Insect Week. https://www.nationalinsectweek.co.uk/news/creepy-victorians .

Tolini, Michelle. “‘Beetle Abominations’ and Birds on Bonnets: Zoological Fantasy in Late-Nineteenth-Century Dress.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 1(1). Spring 2002. http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring02/206-qbeetle-abominationsq-and-birds-on-bonnets-zoological-fantasy-in-late-nineteenth-century-dress .

Endersby, Jim. "Bugs and the Victorians." Reviews in History. June 2010. https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/924 .

Soth, Amelia. "Insect Jewelry of the Victorian Era." JSTOR Daily. January 16, 2020. https://daily.jstor.org/insect-jewelry-of-the-victorian-era/ .

Aside from reviews, advertisements for Christmas cards also appeared in newspapers. I haven't seen examples of any of these:

SOCIALIST CHRISTMAS CARDS.
WE have brought out just the things YOU want this Christmas. We confidently claim that they are the best, smartest and cheapest Christmas cards ever evolved on behalf of the Socialist movement.
Description:—Vivid red art cover, with "A Socialist Greeting" thereon in gold. Inside pages of highly-toned paper, bearing, on the one side, a portrait of Marx, Morris, Tolstoy, Nunquam, Hyndman, Julia Dawson or Keir Hardie. On the opposite side, a quotation from the writings of the Socialist notability portrayed, and, below, a seasonable greeting. Each card bound with red silk ribbon.
Prices:—Single card, 2 1/2d.; the set of 7 for 1S.; 15 for 2S.; 72 for 9S.; 144 for 16S. All post-free. Special rates to branches. We are only issuing a limited number. Therefore write at once to SECRETARY, SOCIALIST SOCIETY, 77A, BLACKETT STREET, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
Justice. December 1, 1906: 5 col 2.