Mele Kalikimaka

This first one is from the set of authentic antique cards I inherited from my great grandmother.  (Well, they're postdated from the 1910s, so they'll all be antiques within the decade.  Close enough.)

But historicity is no excuse.  What kind of a Christmas greeting is this?

.... from South America?

Who would rub it in that they're somewhere sunny and flowery in December while the rest of us (like my great grandmother receiving this in Iowa) are suffering through whiteouts?  Or is this just a pre-printed image that they slapped the Christmas wishes onto?

Now, here's another form of the tropical Christmas greeting:

I kind of like it.  It's bright, cheerful, and a good reminder that Christmas is celebrated plenty of places without ice and snow.

But it's also slightly creepy: the lone evergreen silently slipping onto the shore, opening the gateway for a fully Europeanized, commercially colonized holiday?  (Like the Samoan churches we saw decorated with strings of plastic snowmen and reindeer adorning their rooftops.)  I'm wary, but I'll wait and see.