Halloween Pleasures Vintage Greeting Card | Apple Bobbing 1900s

A child kneeling on a red cushion for what appears to be lumbar support while bobbing for apples is only the beginning—she's dressed in a ruffled pink explosion that somehow constitutes a Halloween costume, leaning forward with an apple in hand over a barrel of water. A black cat sits below, watching this whole production with the silent judgment of someone who has seen too much. The card's cheerful gold text proclaims 'Halloween Pleasures' and assures us that bobbing for apples is the pinnacle of 'fun and merry jest,' which is genuinely the most Victorian thing ever written, second only to dying of consumption at a dinner party. The cat's expression says it all: this is not fun, this is not jest, and whoever wrote this copy had extremely low standards for a good time.