Welcome to Christmas, circa 1800. Yes, the season of light, joy, and gift-giving was once regarded as a time of darkness, danger, and dissipation - and celebrated with all-too-public displays of noisemaking, inebriation, and gluttonous overeating. (Well, maybe not everything has changed.) And though we tend to imagine Victorian-era Christmases as sentimental gatherings around the candlelit tree, blazing hearth, and festive punchbowl, the 19th-century evidence tells us quite otherwise. Drawing from his extensive collection of antique postcards, greeting cards, advertising giveaways, and other ephemera, author John Grossman presents a picture of Christmas Past that, frankly, looks a lot more like Halloween. Broomstick-riding witches and vampire bat-borne cupids deliver New Year's greetings. Fur-clad fairies gather 'round a campfire to roast their Christmas dinner - a huge dead rat. And Saint Nicholas? He's that skinny guy in the bishop robes who arrives with his dark companion,...

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