15 of the Greatest Christmas Cards Ever

Most store-bought Christmas cards feature Santa and his reindeer, Christmas trees or religious iconography. Here are some people who went in another direction.

1. Murphy’s Law is in full effect around the holidays. Above, Michael Herb manages to emphasize this sentiment by showing just how wrong a Christmas photo can go.

2. The weirdest family Christmas card has to be this one, featured on Awkward Family Photos, as submitted by their fan Kristin.

*

3. Popular media likes to ignore the massive wealth gap at the North Pole, but Flickr user Pignet thought the issue was important enough to bring it to light in his family’s Christmas card.

*

4. If there were an award for strangest Christmas card created on behalf of an elected official, then the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico, would definitely be getting a prize. Jorge Santini’s card, depicting his family posed around a taxidermied scene featuring cheetah attacking an antelope, was so bizarre that it managed to capture the attention of news outlets around the world, including The Huffington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times and NPR.

*

5. Flickr user Swansea Photographer managed to get his reindeer-hat-wearing guinea pigs to hold still long enough to get this precious shot.

*

6. If you ever wanted to wish your friends and family a Merry LOLmas, then you might want to follow Kayli Harden’s lead with these great cards that make light of how badly the pets in the photo want revenge for this indignity.

*

7. Here’s another great LOLmas photo, this time by Walter Felix, whose attempt at recreating the Twelve Days of Christmas was cut short by his band of merry felines. On the upside, he does mention that the 7 Swans and 6 Geese were treated for non-life threatening injuries and are expected to make a full recovery.

*

8. When Reddit user Stumbling_Sober was asked to put together his family’s Christmas card, he thought it might be better to instead make one card that would cover all of the year’s biggest holidays. So here is his “Happy Holidays” card that celebrates Valentines, July 4^th, Halloween, St. Patrick’s, Christmas and Easter.

*

9. When Redditor wishiwasforthewolfx’s wife left him, he decided to let his friends and family know how empty his life had become in as few words as possible. I hope this card got him invited to a few extra Christmas parties.

*

10. How do you make sure nobody blinks and ruins the Christmas card? Just have everybody do it. (Via BuzzFeed.)

*

11. Lots of people treat their pets like children. Flickr user yenna has taken that one step further.

*

12. If you were on the hunt for the creepiest Christmas card interpretation of Baby Jesus and his mother, then Max Howell and his girlfriend’s card from 2007 might just be the end of your search.

*

13. For the parents who desperately wish for an occasional “Silent Night,” Michelle Jones has the perfect holiday card.

*

14. Many parents say the worst part about having children is that they grow up so darn fast. To that end, Theresa Thompson managed to show just how much her boys grew up by reshooting her Christmas photo from 1992 a good 15 years later.

*

15. And let's go way back for our last one, which is part of our round-up of bizarre Christmas cards of the 1800s.

If you have any links to your own goofy Christmas (or other holiday) cards, share them in the comments!