Now, as several scholars (or simply wiseguys on the Interwebs) have pointed out, not every Christmas song we sing or listen to or tolerate in the store, is strictly a Christmas song. A large number of songs—Let it Snow, Winter Wonderland, Suzy Snowflake, Frosty the Snowman—are technically snow songs, songs about the joys of winter. They celebrate the magic spell cast by cold white stuff spread like frosting over all the world.
Postcard artists were just as ready as songwriters to exploit the magic of a snow-covered landscape, with or without a reference to the time of year. The cozy scene at the top of this column dates to 1907, but over a century later, you can see pretty much the same scene if you happen through the right neighborhood.
This cozy aerial view comes with no date at all, but the style of that airplane puts it somewhere in the zeroes or tens of the last century. I wonder if the folks snowed into the farmhouse were expecting company, or resented the intrusion of engine sounds on their silent night.
The old footbridge also puts us clearly in the country for a nice, heavy snowfall (not terribly cold, I expect, since the creek is burbling along as cheerfully as ever.)
The artists seem to have figured that snow on the countryside was a lot more picturesque than a snowy street in the city. Here, as in the poem, we see the moon on the breast of newfallen snow, along with a stately church and a mountain which will make getting downhill for the evening service quick and easy. (Perhaps someone with a sleigh will give you a lift home.)
Speaking of downhill, we mustn’t forget there is more to a field filled with snow than just looking at it. The fun side of snow is at least as important as the picturesque angle.
Postcards certainly did not neglect the joys of taking a ride on a sled.
In fact, all the joys of playing in, and with, snow were covered by the postcard companies.
This is not to say that they neglected the quiet joys of a leisurely walk in the newly-decorated landscape.
Or perhaps a boat ride, so you could experience even more of the view.
While taking a ride in the family car was a sure way to make you feel sorry for your snowbird neighbors who headed off somewhere else where they didn’t have any snow at all. I see no teardrops on this card, so it was sent by someone who was being brave about the poor souls who miss all the fun.
To win a wreath of oak leaves, a Roman had to win a battle, kill an enemy, or save the life of another Roman. The oak leaf naturally became associated with valor in war. Today, a Major or a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army wears a stylized oak leaf as an emblem of rank.
*OAK, AUSTRIAN “You Irritate me Excessively”
OAK, LIVE “Liberty”
OAK, WHITE “Independence”
She never seems to have been promoted to the status of Goddess of Horticulture, but a nymph named Pomona was legendary in Rome for being so crazy about gardens and orchards that she hardly ever talked to anybody except the occasional farmer. She was remarkably
beautiful (all that time spent outdoors, I suppose) and attracted a lot of suitors, but if they didn’t want to talk about keeping aphids off the roses or where to put in the new seedlings, she wouldn’t give them the time of day.
The most diligent of her fans was a satyr named Vertumnus, who made a habit of slipping into her garden disguised as a farmer or rural peasant. One day he came around dressed as an elderly lady who wanted to talk about pollination in the garden, and shifted into a lecture about how unnatural it was for Pomona to be so single-minded. Every plant or animal knew nature demanded a little more than that. The lecture finished with a heart-rending story of a young woman who spurned love until she finally turned to stone, and a recommendation that Pomona look up a perfectly delightful young satyr named Vertumnus who would be glad to help her explore that side of nature.
Pomona was too polite to pitch the old busybody out of the garden, but just went on thinning out her carrots and showing no interest at all until Vertumnus finally cried out, “Oh, pshaw!”, tossed off his disguise, and marched out of the garden stark naked. Pomona had had no clue that old lady was anything but an elderly crank, and watched him go with some surprise. She apparently thought he looked really good from behind and decided trees and rutabagas weren’t everything, running after him to accomplish a happy ending (or more).
Some legends have morals, but this one has very few.
OATS “Music”
This comes from the hobby of Greek shepherds, making pipes and flutes of oat stalks. Watching sheep could be intensely boring, and music helped pass the time.
A number of books, swiping from some poem or another, make this “The Witching Soul of Music, Hers”. If I find out what this is all about, I’ll sure pass it along.
*OATS, ONE STALK “Be Careful”
*OBEDIENT PLANT, RED “Docility”
*OBEDIENT PLANT, WHITE “Assurance”
*OLD MAID “Sourness”
*OLD MAN “Meekness”
*OLD WOMAN “Kindness”
These last three meanings are from George O’Neill, who may have been trying to make a point. I decline to argue about it. After all, “Flowers are one of the few noncontroversial things in life”, Clarence Meyer, Fifty Years of the Herbalist Almanac
OLEANDER “Beware”
Almost all floriographers agree on this, and three of them add an exclamation point. Oleander is a swift and powerful poison; I believe one victim in an Agatha Christie story died just from eating something which had been cooked over a campfire on an oleander branch. I checked into this, and I find it really does happen a couple of times a year at somebody’s picnic. As if you didn’t have enough to do, watching for ants and poison ivy: now you have to check into the pedigree of any stick you shove a marshmallow on.
*OLEANDER WITH HELLEBORE “Beware of Slander”
It’s easy to make up all kinds of warning messages with oleander by adding it to something else. Oleander with watermelon tells your friend “Beware of Bulkiness”. That is, if you want to send a bouquet with watermelon in it to someone on a diet.
OLIVE “Peace”*
This is wellnigh unanimous. Even Mr. Morato agreed.
ONION “Everything Backward”
Only two floriographers mention the onion, which strikes me as unfair. Still, none at all mentioned the tomato, so things could be worse.
Morato explains that an onion gets smaller during a full moon, though every other plant in creation expands, hence the backward meaning. See what useful information you can pick up when all you’re trying to do is write a flower language dictionary and get on with your life?
Josephine Addison, however, goes all out, giving the onion six different meanings, all related to a perception of the onion as a symbol of the oneness and diversity of the universe. Frankly, I think we covered the onion as symbol of the universe when we said “Everything Backward”.
*ONION LEAF “I Retreat Immediately”
You’re going backward, see?
OPHRYS, BEE “Error”
If you don’t look a second time, you’ll think the ophrys has a bee on it, but that’s just its little trick. An ophrys, by the way, is an orchis. I mention this because floriographers also mention a Bee Orchis, which is an ophrys. But the Bee Orchis cannot be a Bee Ophrys, because floriographers give them different meanings. Unless that’s just their little trick.
OPRHYS, FROG “Disgust”
OPHRYS, SPIDER “Adroitness”
This is a reference to the spider’s adroitness, or skill, in making webs.
OPRHYS, WINFREY “Just Making Sure You Were Still Alert”
ORANGE BLOSSOM “Chastity”
This is one of our most traditional wedding flowers, so traditional that the phrase “orange blossoms” has been used as a slang expression for a wedding. Every floriographer, just about, gives this flower some meaning related to marriage or to chastity, purity, and virginity, the sort of things one was supposed to assume about the bride. A popular minority meaning, in fact, is “Your Purity Equals Your Loveliness”, a sort of backhanded compliment, if one thinks about it. Claire Powell claims to have read a Victorian book which said orange blossoms can be carried only by virgin brides, but are withheld from non-virgins getting married, “particularly around Paris.”
ORANGE TREE “Generosity”
I mentioned this in a book of the last century, now out of print and rare. Fruit trees have traditionally been seen as symbols of nature’s generosity to mankind. That is to say, a tree works through a whole season to produce fruits to propagate their species, and then some human comes along, eats them, and says “How generous of you!”
Orange, Mock: see MOCK ORANGE
ORCHIS “A Belle”
They do seem to insist on spelling this “Orchis” despite the tendency of us civilians to say “Orchid”. I suppose there’s some very good reason for this, which someone will no doubt write and explain to me, whether I care or not. Anyway, Oliver Wendell Holmes (the father, not the Supreme Court Justice) wrote a poem comparing a beautiful woman to an orchid in beauty, exoticness, and fragility. Nobody reads Holmes Senior these days; we have all decided his son did more to make the world the way it is by practicing law than his father did by writing poems and funny stories. I’ll go along with that, but why is it considered a knock against Senior?
ORCHIS, BEE “Industry”
Busy as a bee, of course. But see also OPHRYS, BEE
ORCHIS, BUTTERFLY “Gaiety”
Humanity has never figured out why butterflies bob up and down and go off at odd tangents when they fly. If it were up to us, we’d figure out where we want to go and just go there, to attend to business. Those nature experts who proclaim that all species on earth, except us, are engaged every second in a grim struggle for survival (which only the most efficient can win) are thoroughly irritated by butterflies. Those of us who are not scientists have come to agree that butterflies do this because it’s fun. We could be wrong about this, but while the nature experts are looking for loopholes, we cling to the idea that butterflies are happy. Anyway, they’re so pretty.
ORCHIS, FLY “Error”*
Say, it has been brought to my attention that these flowers are pollinated because they use these bug-shaped decoys to get insects to come in and have sex with them. I do not recall my teachers mentioning this when they told me about the bees and the flowers.
ORCHIS, YELLOW “Jealously Inclined”
Orchids have long been associated with the exotic, expensive, passionate, voluptuous, and sinister. The Romans believed that satyrs were oversexed because they ate orchid roots. (Orchis is from the Greek for testicle, which is what the roots reminded the Ancient Greeks of.
A lot of things reminded the Ancient Greeks of sex.) Mystery writers seem to like them, too. the most famous example being that great detective and orchid fancier, Nero Wolfe. But we should not ignore those in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep (particularly on the cover of the first paperback edition) and those in James Hadley Chase’s sadistic hardboiled thriller, No Orchids for Miss Blandish. I have been able to find nothing much about Orchids to You, by Hank Janson.
OSIER “Frankness”*
OSMUNDA “Dreams”
See also FERN, FLOWERING
Oxalis: see SORREL, WOOD
OX-EYE “Patience”
Dorothea Dix came up with this; she says it comes from Shakespeare.
Remember me? I’m the one whose mom kept getting me classic secondhand children’s books like Pollyanna and Honey Bunch and the Dachshund of Doom when what I ASKED for were graphic novels about the zombie apocalypse. I wrote to my uncle, suggesting he look into collectibles, figuring he was loaded enough to send a few NFTs my way. But (unlike me) he believes in you, so I bet you’ve convinced him to send me a bunch of cheap used doodads. Could you cut that out, you white-haired crypto-creep?
IRATE, WITH SHORT FUSE
Dear Irafuse:
This IS a wonderful time of year, isn’t it? Sitting under the tree and opening up…our phones to see the images of the gifts we now own but can’t actually touch. It brings tears to the eyes (if you use the right filter on your Tik Tok video.)
Forgive me for being one half fuddy and the other half duddy, but I would like to make a plea, in retreat, for things which are tangible, or fungible if you prefer. Nothing beats the rustle of the paper, the first glimpse of what’s inside, the new present aroma of those wool socks two sizes too big that Aunt Booney knitted. I know, having inside information, that your father is going the smell the fresh leather of a new belt, and hope you get to experience that as well. You do seem to need it.
Since it’s my trade, I have nothing against the giving of secondhand wonders, either: those old-fashioned collectibles you feel your generation has outgrown. The cheap used postcards I hope people are giving by the boxful this Christmas are merely things living people have laughed at, growled about, or even cried over, when they received these, or later, reflecting on how the cards made them feel when the sender was still sending messages from this plane of existence
Not everyone has sympathy for what their ancestors felt about something. If you are one of these, which is probably a good, solid bet, all is not yet lost for you, pumpkin spice sauerkraut. You can make use of the secondhand postcards you are given, or you may join the horde of freeloaders who look at postcard auctions online to swipe the images and use them to make NFTs of their own. You can thus make enough money to buy wonderful Christmas presents in 2023.
But here’s hoping you find something under the tree that makes you reel back with shock and cheer. And, as always at Christmas, I wish you something rather better than you deserve in the next 365 days. L’chaim!
I’ve been checking all over these sno-=covered Interwebs, and I am still confused about the True Meaning of Christmas. I figured you had nothing better to do, so can you explain, please?
PHILOSOPHER
Dear Phil:
On the whole, I would rather deal with a battalion of kids asking for working submarines and ponies and hula hoops, but I’ll give it a try.
Santa Blogs got into trouble with his study of Christmas specials which discovered a certain lack of unanimity on the theme. A goodly number of versions of A Christmas Carol insist that the True Meaning involves generosity not only of spirit but of deed, that seeing to the emotional and physical needs of those who are unfortunate is the point. But an equally large number of moving pictures cry out that the True Meaning of Christmas is having strong family ties (see roughly sixty percent of Lifetime, Hallmark, and BET Christmas movies.)
How the Grinch Stole Christmas reaches a bit wider, reminding us that the True Meaning does not deal with packages, boxes, or bags, but in togetherness with friends and community. Some specials point out that much of this is meaningless, in a True Meaning sort of way, if it does not involve sacrifice to make Christmas things happen. And we have A Charlie Brown Christmas, which historically went out on a limb and suggested that the nativity of Christ was the meaning of Christmas. (Network executives warned that would never sell.)
What are we to make of this cacophonous jingling of bells at different tunes, keeping in mind that many of these movies are themselves inseparable from Christmas for people who love a good Christmas movie at the right time of year? Well, Egg Nog Muffin, Santa Blogs long ago came to a shocking conclusion which has neither pleased nor convinced anybody.
There ain’t no one single True Meaning of Christmas. Christmas means a lot of things, and they all get mixed together, the way Silent Night and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer alike mean Christmas to a listener. None of those Christmas specials and movies mentioned above are WRONG: it’s just that Christmas, as practiced in modern times, mixes all of that and more. It’s about peace and love and family and generosity just the way it’s about running around like a mad soul trying to buy, bake, sing, wrap, and even watch everything that needs to be blended into a Christmas.
What Santa Blogs is telling you, Cranberry Souffle, is that the True Meaning of Christmas, as the Grinch and Garfield and Charlie Brown and Scrooge discovered, has to come from inside you, not from any electronic helper. You have to decide for yourself how much of each True Meaning you want in your personal mix. To you, that will be the True Meaning of Christmas, and it will be that for you and nobody else because it’s your holiday mix.
If you can, keep this mixture on hand and spread it where you feel it is needed, you will be doing what is required during the holiday season. And don’t be discouraged by the Interwebs, which is where everyone practices the One True Tradition of Christmas, which is the right to tell everyone else they’re doing it wrong. That’s part of the mix, too, and you are as entitled as anybody else to it. If you can laugh while you do it, and shake like a bowlful of jelly, Phil, it’ll blend perfectly well with the rest.
Be true to your own Christmas, Phil. Even if it involves playing that stupid song I wish had never been written and could be lost forever in….
Wait. Right. Gotta shove my nose against the wreath and inhale quietly for a while.
I have a niece who is interested in collectibles, but I have had hints from her parents that something small and easy to store would be the best choice. Naturally, I thought of your postcard blog. Can you tell me, in words understandable to a layman, which postcards are the most collectible? Thanks,
LOVING UNCLE, HEADING FOR HOLIDAY
Dear LUNCHEAD,
I am encouraged to hear that the younger generation is still collecting the doodaddery left behind by their elders. And you are wise to consider the possibility of postcards. These come in so many types and traditions that some of them are bound to be collectible, no matter how the winds of fashion blow. (Tried to get ahead of the trend when Ronald Reagan was elected President by buying up a lot of vintage paperback westerns that I was sure would…for what these have cost me in storage since that time, I could have bought stacks and stacks of postcards.)
So you want to be sure the postcards you pick up are collectible, and you want the crash course. I can handle that for you. Something is really collectible if people collect it. No, no, don’t applaud so loudly; if I blush any more, I shall have to lead the sleigh myself this year.
Of course, the more people who collect something, the more collectible it becomes. Let us consider, say, holiday postcards. There will always be people who collect holiday postcards, until such time as we ban all holidays because they get in the way of people working full time to raise the Gross National product. (No, honest: there are people who believe that. I expect they’re all in Administration.) People glory in the variety of images for their holiday: turkeys and pumpkins for Thanksgiving, black cats and pumpkins at Halloween, pumpkins and red leaves for Harvest Festival…it just occurred to me. Is the whole postcard and greeting card industry just a front for the Pumpkin Board? Must check that among online conspiracy theories. (If no one else has done it yet, I have dibbies.)
But, Lunc, there are levels of collecting. Halloween is more popular to collectors than, say, Washington’s Birthday. (There were LOTS of Washington’s Birthday postcards once. Honest.) More people collect Valentine postcards than collect Thanksgiving postcards. As for Christmas postcards, well!
See, within the holiday, some symbols are more collectible than others. I have any number of postcards with arrangements of holly on them. So has anybody else with Christmas cards. Postcard companies knew our ancestors would buy just scads of postcards showing a good old sleighride through the snow, and they were correct. But generations later, the number of people who recall an actual horse-drawn sleighride through the snow is mighty minor. It’s NICE, but not as relevant to the modern Christmas as a tree, or a stocking, or (I’m blushing again) Santa himself.
And even there, we have varying demand. A Christmas tree is generally less interesting than a Christmas stocking (either is more popular if vintage toys are included in the picture.) By far, the most popular image to collect is Santa Claus, simply because he is still well=known, and to this day is drawn by every artist in a particular way. Once upon a time, Lunc, Santa Claus wore green, blue, and even yellow suits trimmed with fur (red was standardized, as the ads keep telling us, by Coca-Cola). The beard varies, the suit is sometimes the jacket and pants of Santa or the red gown of Father Christmas, varies. Even his waistline is a matter of study by your collectors. (Look, it’s not my fault. It’s all those cookies.)
I guess the easiest rule of thumb for you is that if a postcard is largely unavailable, or costs a whole lot more than you want to spend on your niece, it’s probably collectible. Of course, you could follow the advice of A. Edward Newton, and simply buy her something she likes. Then she’ll always have something nice even if it never becomes a rarity with a seven-digit price. Not only is that more in the spirit of the holiday; it’s cheaper. (And maybe that’s your spirit of Christmas.)
Also known as the Sensitive Plant, because it closes its leaves when touched. According to the Greeks, it was originally a woman named Cephisa who, fleeing from Pan, was turned into a plant. She still shrinks from the touch of men. (And women, by the way.)
Some books list “Sensibility” for this plant. Once upon a time, sensibility and sensitivity meant the same thing. We’ve fixed things up since then.
MINT “Virtue”
And this plant was a nymph named Minthe. Pluto, CEO of Hades, fell in love with her. His wife Persephone, whom he had kidnapped, for goodness sake, became so jealous that she killed Minthe, even though the nymph had been strictly virtuous and wasn’t playing around with Pluto at all.
MISTELTOE “I Surmount Difficulties”
That’s it: no Druids with copper sickles or kissing at Christmas or any of that good stuff. There are times when I have my doubts about the floriographers. This comes from the way mistletoe climbs trees.
*MISTELTOE SEED “I Love the White-haired One”
MITRARIA COCCINEA “Indolence, Dullness”
MOCK ORANGE “Counterfeit”
Because it’s a mock orange, and not a real one. There are some who want it to have the meaning “Brotherly Love” because its scientific name is Philadelphius. Hasn’t caught on yet.
MINARDA AMPLEXICAULIS “Your Whims Are Unbearable”
MONK’S HOOD “Knight Errantry”
The problem is that this plant has several very common folk names; it is known as Monk’s Hood, Helmet Flower, Wolfsbane, and Aconite, as Professor Snape points out. Helmet Flower, of course, is the source of its usual meaning, above, though it is seldom listed under the name Helmet Flower in the floriography books. Many of the meanings given to Monk’s Hood are thoroughly nasty, our pioneer floriographers tending to be militantly Protestant, while people who called it Aconite knew it for a poisonous plant, and gave it the meaning “Misanthropy”. The Greeks said this sprouted from the spittle of Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hell. I gather it was not a favorite among them.
MOONWORT “Forgetfulness”
This may come from Orlando Furioso, one of those great works no one ever reads. Orlando lost his memory and his marbles, so his best friend flew to the moon to get them back, as everything which is lost winds up on the moon. (That’s what those craters really are: odd socks.)
The floriographers also lost their memory, as this is also Lunaria, or Honesty, which they said meant something else altogether.
Claire Powell, for once, tells a simpler story. The flower, she says, looks like a French cake, a moon-shaped one, called the oublie, which comes from the word oublier, to forget. This is entirely too reasonable to be true.
MORNING GLORY “Affectation”
MOSCHATELL “Weakness”*
This plant has a musky scent, but it is too weak to be unpleasant, according to Claire Powell. And here I was waiting to write about people who have a weakness for muscatel.
MOSS “Maternal Love”*
Claire Powell says mothers in Lapland wrap their babies in ermine and cradle them in moss. I don’t know why she goes on and on about Lapland; I bet lots of mothers cradled babies in moss.
*MOSS, GREEN OR GRASSY “Laziness”
MOSS, ICELAND “Health”
Joseph E. Meyer says this was once used as a cure for consumption. He doesn’t come right out and say how well it worked, but I guess it was better than nothing at all.
*MOSS, WHITE OR GREY “Old Age”
*MOTHER OF THOUSANDS “Amazement, Astonishment”
I should say so.
MOTHERWORT “Concealed love”
Not that it has anything to do with the meaning, but Charles M. Skinner says you have to dip this in your sake before you take a drink.
Mourning Bride, Mourning Widow: see SCABIOUS
MOVING PLANT “Agitation”
I’d be agitated at the sight of a plant coming at me, myself.
MUDWORT “Tranquility”
There is a flower called the Mudwort, but I believe it owes its place in flower language to someone who misprinted Madwort, which also has the meaning “Tranquility”. Mind you, three floriographers broke away and gave it the meaning “Happiness”, making a misprint for the following.
MUGWORT “Happiness”
MULBERRY “Wisdom”
According to those who know about such things, the Mulberry was considered the temperamental opposite of the Almond, which see. Unlike that tree, the Mulberry waits to put out fruit and leaves until it can be sure the weather will cooperate. Red and white mulberries sometimes get separate listings, but have very much the same meaning.
*MULBERRY LEAF “Hidden Treasure”
MULBERRY, BLACK “I Will Not Survive You”*
Once upon a time, there lived a pair of lovers named Pyramus and Thisbe, and if you know the story of Romeo and Juliet, you know pretty much all you need to know about Pyramus and Thisbe. Anyway, when Pyramus killed himself, his red blood hit the white mulberry and stained it purple, so that it was afterward known as the Black Mulberry. Some floriographers, trying to make a point, define this as “I Shall Not Survive You”, but I will not get mixed up in it.
*MULBERRY, WEEPING “Wretchedness”
*MULLEIN, MOTH “Another Has Taken the Place”
MULLEIN, WHITE “Good Nature”
A facet of folk agriculture known as companion planting started to come back into fashion in the 1980s or so. In this, the planting of one kind of plant can attract bugs or disease away from a more valuable plant. White Mullein, I am told, draws stinkbugs away from your apple trees, which I must say is mighty good-natured of the White Mullein, since it then has to put up with the stinkbugs.
MUSHROOM “Suspicion”*
Some floriographers prefer to say Champignon, perhaps picking it up from Mme. De Latour, since that is the French for “mushroom”. In English, though, Champignon is used to refer only to nonpoisonous mushrooms. Of course, even with those there’s the suspicion….
*MUSHROOM ON A GREEN TURF “An Upstart”
Nobodies who pretended to be Somebodies were once referred to as mushrooms, from the mushroom’s habit of springing up out of nowhere.
MUSK PLANT “Weakness”
See also MOSCHATELL
*MUSTARD, BLACK “Unpleasant Charm”
MUSTARD SEED “Indifference”
The most famous mustard seed is the Biblical one which some people’s faith is no bigger than. The floriographers regarded such a person as mighty indifferent.
Myosotis: see FORGET-ME-NOT
MYROBALAN “Privation”*
MYRRH “Gladness”
The story has nothing to do with the meaning, but far be it from me to ignore the public’s right to know. Myrrh was another ancient Greek who got in bad with the gods. She or her father said something to tick off Aphrodite, who retaliated by inflicting the girl with a mad lust for her father. She sneaked into his bed twelve nights in a row, but he figured it out on the thirteenth and lit out after her with his sword to avenge the crime she’d made him commit. Praying mightily for rescue, she was at last turned into this tree. Nine months later, the bark split and out popped baby Adonis, who grew up to be Aphrodite’s great love, and a future flower himself. Funny how these things work out.
MYRTLE “Love”
Brides in ancient Rome wore this, for it was associated with Venus, the Goddess of Love. They got this from Greece, where the planet was sacred to Aphrodite, their Goddess of Love. This may have come from Egypt, where the plant was sacred to THEIR Goddess of love. Where myrtle got this reputation originally, and what it all means to women named Myrtle, I cannot say.
Some Greek legends said it was a priestess of Aphrodite who married without Aphrodite’s permission and was turned into it. But other stories say it was the first plant Aphrodite took hold of when she was born out of the sea foam. (So she could hardly have turned her priestess into it later on.) A third story says that once, surprised by a bunch of satyrs when she was in swimming, Aphrodite jumped out of the water and ran to hide behind a myrtle bush. I don’t know any more of that particular story. Sorry.
*MYRTLE WITH CYPRESS AND POPPIES “Despair”
*MYRTLE, WAX “I Will Enlighten You”
N
*NANDINA “My Love Will grow Warmer”
NARCISSUS “Egotism”
Sometimes spelled Egoism, and sometimes spelled Self-love. Or you can just go with Narcissism.
As you probably know, Narcissus was the most beautiful boy who ever lived. People fell in love with him as he walked by, though he never noticed, because he knew nothing of love. One lass named Echo pined away for him until she wasted down to nothing but a voice. A man spurned by young Narcissus was made of sterner stuff, and prayed to the gods to teach the lad a lesson. This was right up the alley of Nemesis, the god in charge of revenge, who saw to it that when Narcissus turned sweet sixteen, he got a look at himself in a reflecting pool. He fell madly in love with his reflection, and spent the rest of his life trying to figure out how to embrace that fine-looking young man. He starved to death and was turned into this beautiful yellow flower. You know, I suspected all along that he was a blond.
By the way, those of you who are given a narcissus can take heart. Sheila Pickles says giving this flower indicates that the giver, not the recipient, is an egotist.
*NARCISSUS, DOUBLE “Female Ambition”
Is this a White Hollyhock, then? If so, why can’t they say so, and make life easier for the rest of us?
Narcissus, False: see DAFFODIL
*NARCISSUS, YELLOW “Disdain”
Claire Powell calls this the hardest narcissus to grow, and the least pleasant to have around once it has grown.
NASTURTIUM “Patriotism”
C.F. Leyel says this sprang from the blood of a Trojan soldier who died defending his homeland. Not everyone joins him on this. Nor are they rock solid on what plant it is (see CRESS). OR why it’s called nasturtium. Nasturtium means “Nose twister”. (So I presume Austurtium is an Eye twister.) Some say you twist your nose in this direction because the flower smells so sweet, and others because it is so peppery. Others claim you wrinkle your nose when you bite into it. Not me, buster. And some books spell it “Nasturtion”. What about that, huh?
*NASTURTIUM, DWARF “Well-meaning”
NASTURTIUM, SCARLET “Splendor”
*NEMESIA “Shadowed”
NEMOPHILA “Success Everywhere”
This is supposed to be very easy to grow, blooming successfully everywhere. One variety is called Baby Blue-Eyes.
NETTLE “Slander”
“Cruelty” is a popular minority meaning. This plant stings or burns your hand if handled incorrectly. You get the general idea.
NETTLE TREE “Conceit”
This was originally “Concert”, but someone along the line misprinted it, and this became the preferred meaning.
*NICOTINE “No Obstacle Shall Stand In My Path”
Nigella Damascena: see LOVE-IN-A-MIST
NIGHTSHADE “Dark Thoughts”
NIGHTSHADE, BITTERSWEET “Truth”*
Clarence Hylander traces this symbolism to the days of the pioneers, who seem to have spent their time biting into plants. This one, they said, was bitter when first tasted, but gradually turned sweet, the way truth slowly becomes palatable. It is also somewhat poisonous; I don’t know how the pioneers worked around that.
Nightshade, Deadly: see BELLADONNA
NIGHTSHADE, ENCHANTER’S “Witchcraft”
Also known as Circaea, after Circe, the sorceress who turned Odysseus’s men into pigs, this plant got its reputation by growing in dark places. Henry Phillips, however, claims it is because the plant has little hooklike stickers that drag you in the way Circe brought in the sailors. Well, not exactly like.
*NONE-SO-PRETTY “Beautiful”
This plant is also known as Nancy Pretty. The experts don’t seem to agree on what plant it is, though.
NOSEGAY “Gallantry”
A nosegay is a bouquet; very gallant of you to bring one to your lady.
It is ungallant to discuss a lady’s age, and perhaps a bit silly to point out a flaw in my own story. If I have not made this clear, I believe that Louise Cortambert, and not Louis-Aime Martin, was Charlotte de Latour, founder of modern floriography. I have not been able to find any source for Louise’s birthdate. We know that her book came out at some time before 1820; most authorities assign it a date of 1817 or 1818. Well, in 1817, Louis-Aime Martin was 31 years old. Pierre Cortambert, Louise’s husband, was just eleven.
Now, there is no requirement that Louise be the same age as the man she would eventually marry. Had she been a mere five or six years older, the thing is more plausible. But I will say it makes me nervous.
People have had their portraits on postcards for sundry reasons. Some are so famous that postcard companies print pictures of them, knowing the public will buy famous faces. Others pay to have postcards printed of them in HOPES of celebrity. Sometimes that worked and the people became famous enough that the postcard companies paid to put their faces on cardboard.
But celebrity is a slippery thing. I would like to show you a few famous faces which you might not have run into on Facetwitter or other such feeds. Some were famous when the postcard was printed and faded a bit while others became famous after these postcards came out.
Politicians like to get their faces out before the public, Abraham Lincoln ironically being the first candidate to understand the importance of photography and famous faces. (Abraham Lincoln was confident that he was one of the ugliest men on earth and so hated having his picture taken that only one photographer ever caught him smiling.)
The gent holding a dog at the top of this column is Peter Peyser, who knew enough of politics to put out a postcard with his family (and dogs) on it. He served three terms as Congressman from New York as a Republican, was out of office for two years, and then went back to Congress for two terms as a Democrat. But what makes his postcards of extra interest is the woman standing on his left, who became a celebrity in her own right. This is Penny Peyser, whose acting career was split between stage and screen (Rich Man, Poor Man, Crazy Like a Fox, Love Tony). You get a couple of celebrities for the price of one (AND a baby and neat dogs.)
We have something similar in the family picture postcard urging you to vote for John C. Culver, who wound up doing ten years as Congressman from Iowa and six years as Senator. The secret celebrity here is sitting next to the dog. Chet grew up to become Governor of Iowa, showing these things can run in families.
This man was famous for running, and for selling postcards of himself. Wilhelm Voigt was a shoemaker, but did a little thieving as a sideline, and found himself disliked by the police wherever he went. In 1906, wearing various secondhand bits of uniform he’d bought secondhand, he traveled to the town of Kopenick, started giving orders (which were obeyed, since he had a uniform on) and ended by ordering the arrest of the mayor and the town treasurer, confiscating the town treasury for investigative purposes. He was even more unpopular with the authorities now, but by the time they caught him, the story had traveled fast and far even without Interwebs, and everyone was laughing. As the Hauptmann von Kopenick (Captain from Kopenick) he went on the lecture tour, sold postcards of himself, and just became a symbol of what some people will do when they see a man in uniform. He became a national folk hero, with countless movie and comic book versions of the story. This is the man himself, acting out part of HIS version of the story (in which he claimed he had no IDEA what people would do when he bought an old uniform just to keep warm.)
Major Mite here has just as much right to his title as Wilhelm had to his, but during World War II he DID do recruiting posters for the USMC. He was a circus performer, as you might have guessed, and such folk knew the value of postcards from a very early era. Clarence Chesterfield Howerton’s main claim to fame TODAY, however, is that at 2 feet 4 inches tall, he was the smallest Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz. So you have seen this celebrity more often than any of the others. (He apparently had no lines, so you have to look for him yourself.)
If you have not seen this lady as much as Major Mite, you have probably still seen her more than once. Ellaline Terriss was an actress with a sparkling personality which led to a long career of being attacked by critics who claimed that her success was due to a. being so popular no one noticed shortcomings in her performances, b. being a sympathetic heroine after the murder of her actor father by a deranged fan, and c. being married to a real go-getter of an actor/director/producer. Be that as it might, she wrote and produced and performed at his side, and the team of Ellaline and Sir Seymour Hicks could hardly go wrong with the public. IF the name Seymour Hicks rings a bell, he was, among many other things, a specialist in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, playing him for decades on the stage and in two motion pictures, one of which, from 1935, has been one of the most shown versions on American television since 1946. I am told Ellaline is to be found in both these Carols, though I have yet to track down exactly what she did in either one.
This is why people buy these scruffy old postcards. You never know when you’re going to spot a celebrity who just isn’t celebrated at the moment.
So I thought I would spend a little time today on postcards showing one of the most popular of Christmas animals. I mean, of course…what’s that, Radish Ribbon Candy? The reindeer? Well, no. Actually, I have very few reindeer postcards in my inventory. That’s why I had to start this column off with an elk instead.
No, I am going more for the Nativity scenes of our childhood, and that manger we saw in those snowglobes that no one has ever explained to me. The Scriptural authority for snow falling on the manger is…..
What’s that, Mango marzipan? The donkey? Well, no, not exactly. I’ve done a lot of columns about donkeys on postcards, and I suppose my readers are getting tired of….
What readers? You, child, will be getting sticks and coal in your stocking.
Why do I think my readers aren’t tired of everything else I write about? Not only are you NOT going to get any coal in your stocking, I expect Santa will actually take the stocking away from your chimney. If I may get along with….
Yes, artichoke almondbark, the donkey has a certain right to be seen at the manger, and also what I wanted to talk about, the…..
No, not the cow, either. We are not going to get to the….
Yes, I KNOW there were probably sheep as well! But we are dealing here with my sale stock, and I wanted to discuss my camels. When you have a blog of your own, you can write about the Christmas birds who wait each year to greet the Mystic Bow Tie, but we….
See what you made me do?
All I wanted to do, see, was use the manger and the three Wise Men to show a few camel postcards, not especially Christmas-related. I had no intention of getting into a debate on what animals do and do not belong in your snowglobe. People do, you know. I don’t know where the notion of the Magi riding camels came into the picture, though camels were used for transportation, and they might as well have used camels as anything else. There are people who spend their careers arguing about just the camels which are in the Bible. Are they two-humped or one-humped? (One: the two-hump camels come from elsewhere). Are all the camels in the Bible camels or just representational animals applied to periods and people who couldn’t have had camels because camels were not yet broken for riding at that point in history? Why would a camel even WANT to walk through the eye of a needle? It goes on and on.
Camels are on postcards because of their legendary ease at going without a drink. That has nothing to do with Christmas, particularly at certain office parties I have attended.
Even here we have people who argue the way you do with a poor blogger. How many days DOES a camel generally go without a drink? And is the camel proud of this, or would it just as soon indulge?
The folks involved with the Mystic Shrine know what I’m talking about.
Once upon a time, though, a Mr. Thomas Nast, who gave us Republican elephants and Santa Claus, among his other icons, decided a camel should represent the Prohibition Party. The Prohibition Party, which continues to this day, accepted this mascot and, somewhere around the nineteen-teens brought out a series of cheerfully colored camels who were very proud of their non-drinking.
These camels could be localized, having a large space to put in a city or a meeting time for a Prohibition gathering.
Not only did they come in all colors and shades, these camels even came in assorted moods, as in this case, where the whole drinking subject is abandoned for a thoroughly postcard-style camel joke.
No, mincemeat muffin, I do NOT have one in which the camel wishes anyone a Merry Christmas. Why don’t you make like a camel and go follow a star someplace?
I am told this can be poisonous if taken in large quantities. I do not wish to know who ate enough Lobelia to find that out. Our ancestors also called this Gagroot and Vomitroot, so apparently a lot of people tried it.
LOCUST “Affection Beyond the Grave”
LOCUST, HONEY “Sweetness”
LONDON-PRIDE “Frivolity”
I get the impression floriographers were trying to make a point about people who were proud of living in the city, surrounded by frivolous things which took one’s mind off the contemplation of flowers. Robert Tyas seems to be the source of this sentiment.
Lote Tree: see JUJUBE TREE
LOTUS “Eloquence”*
Also known as the Lotos, this should not be mistaken for the Lotus which is the namesake of, say, the Lotus Position: that’s the next entry. This Lotus was originally a woman named Lotis who was fleeing Priapus and turned into this tree. Priapus is one of those gods whose myths cannot be discussed in a nice family book. He was the deification, or personification, of the male reproductive organ, and if you see some of his statues, you can imagine what his myths were like. He was also, by the by, the God of Gardens.
LOTUS FLOWER “Estranged Love”
One lover has forgotten the other, perhaps; the Lotus has been associated with forgetfulness since the men of Odysseus, who should have been odysseying around, landed on the Isle of Lotus-Eaters, ate lotuses themselves, and forgot all about their responsibilities. Odysseus had to have them dragged back to the ship. Most authorities believe what they ate was this water lily type of Lotus.
If you were dying to know, this Lotus was also once a young woman. She had a mad crush on Hercules, and died of sheer annoyance when he failed to notice her hanging around. She should have forgotten him.
LOTUS LEAF “Recantation”
This means a leaf of the Lotus Flower, above, and the meaning probably relates to the forgetfulness theme. You recant if you go back on your previous story, perhaps forgetting it. For examples, see any list of campaign promises.
LOVE-IN-A-MIST “Perplexity, Puzzlement”
This is Nigella damascene, Common Fennel Flower, or Love-In-a-Puzzle, hence the meaning. Sometimes it is known as Ragged Lady, in which case the floriographers made the meaning “Bad Housekeeping”. Richard Folkard, Jr. says it is also known as Kiss-Me-Twice-Before-I-Rise, thus beating out the Pansy, which is known as Kiss-Me-Ere-I-Rise.
LOVE-IN-IDLNESS “Love At First Sight”
See also PANSY
LOVE-LIES-A-BLEEDING “Hopeless Not Heartless”
This means “I am failing to respond to you not because I am heartless but because I know I have no hope of ever deserving your love”. Or something like that. This is an amaranth and is sometimes known, in this efficient and romanceless day, as Love-Lies-Bleeding.
LUCERNE “Life”*
This is another name for Alfalfa. Robert Tyas, among others, notes that when Lucerne stops growing in a spot, it will never grow there again, just as life will not return to a dead body.
Lunaria: see MOONWORT
*LUNGWORT “Thou Art My Life”
LUPINE “Voraciousness”
This was named for Lupus, the Wolf, because it grows in poor soil. See, people found it growing there and assumed it had caused the poor soil, voraciously devouring all the nutrients, like a wolf among livestock. Both wolf and lupine were being slandered. Bad soil causes the lupines, rather than the other way around. Lupines grow so well in bad land that they are now touted as an efficient food crop, a development perhaps foreseen by highwayman Dennis Moore in the eighteenth century.
Early floriographers seem to have preferred “Dejection” because Vergil had written of “the sad lupine”. But since he never explained why lupines struck him as depressed, this rather leaves us where we started.
LYCHNIS “Religious Enthusiasm”
This is the flower of St. John the Baptist, and is supposed to light up on his day. Keep your eye on it.
Lychnis, Meadow: see RAGGED ROBIN
LYCHNIS, SCARLET “Sunbeaming Eyes”
Lythrum: see WILLOW HERB
M
MADDER “Calumny”*
Henry Phillips relates scandalous gossip to the red dye derived from Madder. Legend says that if an animal eats madder, even its bones will be stained red, the way calumny will mark a reputation forever.
*MADRONA “Unity”
MADWORT, ROCK “Tranquility”*
The Greeks are said to have used this plant to alleviate madness, tranquilizing the patient.
MAGNOLIA “Love of Nature”
Sarah Josepha Hale came up with this. She doesn’t say how.
Sarah was also the author of a littler fortune-telling game, Fortuna Flora, which appears in later editions of her flower language. Since the copyright has long since expired, I thought about adding it somewhere in this book. But forget it. You have to find your flower based on the week you were born, the month you were born, and your temperament: lymphatic, sanguine,
bilious, or nervous. The you add the numbers of the birthdates and the number of your temperament, and…. I’ve read the dang thing five times and I’m still not sure how it works.
MAGNOLIA, LAUREL-LEAVED “Dignity”
MAGNOLIA, SWAMP “Perseverance”
MAIDWORT “Celibacy”
MALLOW “Mildness”
You are suggesting that the recipient has a sweet disposition.
*MALLOW, DWARF “Meekness”
MALLOW, MARSH “Beneficence”*
Yes, the marshmallow in your hot chocolate is named for this. The meaning comes about because apparently just about every part of the plant can be turned into food in one way or another.
Mallow, Syrian: see ALTHEA
Mallow, venetian: see HIBISCUS
MALON CREEANA “Will You Share My Future?”
MANCHINEAL TREE “Falsehood”*
This is another poisonous plant. The fruit smells good, according to Claire Powell, but contains a burning liquid that makes it a shock to bite into. Charles M. Skinner notes a belief that even to sleep in the shade of a manchineel tree must inevitably be fatal.
MANDRAKE “Rarity”*
The mandrake is one of the most popular supernatural herbs of all time, because our distant ancestors thought the root was shaped like a human being. It was believed to scream when uprooted, was eaten as an aid to fertility, and was so rare and mysterious that many floriographers recoiled and made it mean “Horror”.
MAPLE “Reserve”*
The leaves are slow to open, and slow to fall, which, in the eyes of the floriographers, suggests that the maple “keeps itself to itself”.
*MAPLE, SUGAR “identification”
Marguerite: see DAISY
MARIANTHUS “Hope for Better Days”
MARIGOLD “Grief”
Sheila Pickles says this flower grieves for the sun, folding up its leaves when the sun sets. That’s reasonable, I guess, but other plants do it, too. The Marigold seems to suggest unpleasantness wherever it goes: the French call it “Souci”, or “Worry”, while its name in Mexico means “Flower of Death”.
*MARIGOLD GARLAND “Jealousy”
MARIGOLD WITH CYPRESS “Despair”
MARIGOLD WITH POPPIES “I Will Soothe Your Grief”
*MARIGOLD WITH ROSES “The Bittersweet and Pleasant Pains of Love”
*MARIGOLD WITH WOODBINE AND BLACKTHORN “I Prophesy That You Will Marry Soon”
*MARIGOLD WITH ANY FLOWER “The Thread of Life, Made of Joys and Sorrow”
MARIGOLD, AFRICAN “Vulgar Minds”
This was Henry Phillips’s idea: he says the odor is offensive and vulgar. This gave him an excellent opportunity to launch into a little homily about people with vulgar minds. Henry’s flower language book is bigger on homilies than on poetry.
Marigold, Fig: see MESEMBRYANTHEMUM
MARIGOLD, FRENCH “Jealousy”
MARIGOLD, GARDEN “Uneasiness”
Marigold, Marsh: see COWSLIP
MARIGOLD, PROPHETIC “Prediction”
The meaning comes from the name, but where did the name come from? John Ingram says the flower was used for predicting romantic success, the original “She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not” flower. But see below.
MARIGOLD, SMALL CAPE “Presage”
This means about the same as “Predict” or “Foreshadow”. Claire Powell says the flower fails to open in the morning if it is going to rain later in the day, and therefore was used to predict weather.
MARIGOLD, YELLOW “Sacred Affections”
MARJORAM “Blushes”
Henry Phillips says the leaves of some species are delicately tinged with red. Other experts say the Romans crowned married couples with marjoram after the wedding ceremony, whereupon the newlyweds would blush. I couldn’t say, myself; I wasn’t there.
*MARJORAM, GREAT “Falsehood”
Oregano, to you.
\MARVEL OF PERU “Timidity”
This is also known as Four O’Clocks, from its tendency to open at exactly four o’clock in the afternoon/ This makes it timid, see, since it shuns the light of day and blooms only toward evening, when it can hide in the shadows. But check out what they said about Thornapple.
Mastic: see SCHINUS
Mayflower: see ARBUTUS, TRAILING
MEADOWSWEET “Uselessness”*
The early floriographers saw no nutritional or medicinal uses for this plant. (Mme. De Latour asked “But is it nothing then, to be beautiful?”) You will find a long debate about whether it was actually sweet, too. Some said it was sweet enough to perfume an entire meadow, while others claimed it smelled like nothing much. Geoffrey Grigson suggests the name comes from its use in sweetening mead, a honey-based booze much favored in northern Europe. As to its medicinal uses, about the time floriography started to trend downhill, somebody distilled salicylic acid from it, the first step to that aspirin you have in your medicine chest now.
Uselessness, indeed!
*MEDLAR “Timidity and Peevishness”
Mercury: see BONUS HENRICUS
MESEMBRYANTHEMUM “Idleness”
Like Marvel of Peru, this is a flower which does not bloom first thing in the morning, like some people I know. This time, however, the floriographers saw nothing to praise in this, basically accusing the plant of loafing.
MEZEREON “Desire to Please”*
This is known primarily as Mezereuum today. Henry Phillips says the meaning comes from the flower’s coquettish tendency to flaunt its spring wardrobe in the dead of winter. And coquettes, he goes on, have a desire to please. Mm-hmm.
MIGNONETTE “Your Good Qualities Surpass Your Good Looks”*
This is intended as a double compliment, though just how far you’ll get with “You sure are nicer than you are good-looking”, I couldn’t say. You try it and drop me a postcard. The word “mignonette”, by the way, means “charming little thing”, and not, as Dorothea Dix has it, “My Little Nun”.
Anyhow, this is a plant with teeny flowers but an enchanting aroma. The meaning comes direct from a quaint little tale about the Count of Walsthein, his beautiful and fashionable fiancée Amelia, and her mousy little cousin Charlotte. They were all sitting around one day, attaching mottos to flowers to pass the time, the way one does on a slow afternoon, and…oh, it goes on and on. I bet you can guess how it all worked out.
Milfoil: see YARROW
*MILKWEED “Young and Foolish”
MILKWORT “Hermitage”*
Claire Powell says hermits always planted this around their caves. I suppose some of them might have.
I suppose I could look it up on the Interwebs and find out who gets credit for inventing situation comedy. Every writer has a different answer, I suppose, unless the world has divided into two camps, one arguing for Greek playwrights and another for medieval troubadours. But they did exist long before The Honeymooners. (That alone should get me hate mail. “How dare you mention the Honeymooners when Fibber McGee and Molly had the territory covered on radio long before, etc. etc.” We live in an age of lively debate, to call it nothing nastier.)
In any case, the postcard cartoonists were well aware of all the themes which made the sitcom. Marital woes were at the top of everyone’s list, and in every society where marriage was considered vital, infidelity was considered vital to comedy. A wife walking in on a husband at precisely the wrong moment, as seen above, was one of the most basic story motifs, whether the husband was actually being faithful, just thinking about it, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Some writers prefer their heroes to be guilty and some innocent in these situations. I don’t have time or resources (or the brains) to consider the cultural distinctions right now.)
Is this chap from the early days of radio (or wireless) acquainted with the young ladies in question or just wishing he was? Unnecessary to know, really: the joke is in his wife being unaware of the wireless communication.
A standard gag in the sitcom is watching the hero stammer as his wife turns up evidence, which she may or may not pretend to misunderstand. (Some fabric softener might have prevented this situation: let us all take a lesson from this.)
Unlikely though the evidence might seem from a logical standpoint, we are talking sitcom here, not pure logic. Surely, in the days of homes with servants, the cook was not ALWAYS baking, her hands covered in flour. But you’d never know it from the postcards of the time.
In the situation comedies of our ancestors, though, the cook was often busy entertaining passing policemen, who always found the kitchen while walking a cold beat. The master of the house was more likely to be found fondling the upstairs or downstairs maid. (Note to self: see if anyone has already written a song called “I fondled the downstairs maid upstairs.”)
Of course, the master of the house had to go to work. Which led to confusion about what he was working on.
I used to work at a place myself where, according to legend, one maintenance man’s chief job description was to keep an eye on the doors and if the wife of the CEO dropped by, he was to get to the CEO’s office before she did so that certain female members of staff could head for a side door.
According to the same legend, this never especially fooled the wife of the CEO, just prevented her – usually – from catching hubby with his hands in the cookie jar (so to speak.)
There was the famous double standard in those days, of course. You DO realize that it was always the husband who did the cheating, and never the pure, poor wife. Well, you’re realizing wrong.
The sitcom of the postcard (and the pop song AND the stage farce) did not discriminate. The Mrs. was just as likely to stray as the Mister whenever it was funny.
The evidence might seem to be more obvious in her case.
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