Vintage Halloween Greeting Card with Jack-o'-Lantern and Black Cat

The fact that a black cat has claimed the jack-o'-lantern as its personal throne sets the tone for an entire scene of pumpkin worship that follows. Two children in their finest Victorian sailor-meets-Sunday-school outfits kneel below in what can only be described as full gourd supplication. The boy, decked out in a dark jacket with a red necktie, reaches one hand up toward the glowing carved face with the energy of someone presenting an offering to a vegetable deity, while the girl beside him — in a white dress, hair loose — appears to be cowering or bowing, her hands raised in either terror or praise, it's genuinely unclear which. The black cat presides over the whole tableau with the smug authority of a cult leader's familiar, staring directly outward as if to say: 'Yes, this is normal. The children kneel. They always kneel.'