Vintage Christmas Card with Children & Dolls, Edwardian Era

The rosy-cheeked girl in an orange-red dress and knee socks holds a swaddled baby doll with the casual authority of a Victorian middle manager, while three smaller dolls — a toddler in a high chair, a pink-pajama'd figure reaching upward, and a dark-skinned doll in a floral dress — orbit her like subjects awaiting orders beneath a sparse Christmas branch. Her smug little smile says 'I have the baby and I will not be sharing,' and frankly the toddler strapped into that high chair under a lit candle seems like a fire hazard someone should address. The racial diversity of the dolls is either a progressive moment for the era or the uncomfortable kind of 'representation' that makes museum curators sweat through their blazers — probably both. 'Veselé Vánoce,' reads the Czech greeting below, which translates to 'Merry Christmas' and not, as the composition suggests, 'Hierarchy Is a Gift.'