Victorian Christmas Card with Child Caroler & Girl in Red Dress

Two small Victorian children sit perched on an oversized holly branch like it's their personal jungle gym, their velvet bottoms apparently immune to the comically sharp spiky leaves surrounding them. The boy in dark clothing occupies the upper branch and blows a tiny trumpet directly into the void, while the girl below — dressed head-to-toe in a red coat and white fur-trimmed bonnet like a pint-sized Mrs. Claus — sits with her hands tucked into a matching white muff, radiating the smug energy of someone who has already won Christmas. Both kids wear expressions of serene, vacant joy that could only be achieved by a Victorian illustrator or a very good pharmaceutical, proof that apparently this is what children did before child labor laws gave them something better to complain about.