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Even Santa Has Bad Days: The Rainy Day Christmas Card, Charles "Chip" Kaufmann

Maine History

The Rainy Day Christmas Card, donated to the Maine Historical Society Library by Earl Shettleworth, was designed by Rafael Tuck & Sons in London and printed in the 1880s or 1890s at the First Fine Arts Works Studios, Saxony. Other Victorian Christmas cards produced by Tuck (1821-1900) contain similarly un-Christmas-like images: a bouquet of damask roses; wild flowers; apple blossoms; green Scottish heathland; idyllic fishing nets in a rural village; a country churchyard with newly-green birch trees beyond a waterfall. Clearly, behind the clouds of an English Christmas, somewhere, the sun must be shining.