Victorian Santa Wreath New Year Clock Card | Vintage Greeting

Santa has apparently decided the best way to ring in the New Year is to loom over a small girl while clutching an enormous holly wreath like a festive hula hoop, his face framed within it like a department store portrait that's gone off the rails. This child — decked out in a white dress with yellow accents and matching bows in her hair — stands with her hands pressed against a massive ornate clock face showing the hands near midnight, essentially being conscripted into manually operating the passage of time itself. The whole composition cheerfully combines a child doing unsupervised clock maintenance with a wreath-framed Santa hovering in the background like a jolly specter who absolutely did not ask permission before appearing, and somehow this was considered the ideal image for 'Happy New Year.'