Victorian Christmas Greeting Card: Mistletoe Kiss Scene

Both figures seem to be operating under entirely different agendas: the boy in his red-and-yellow diamond-patterned doublet (dressed like a Renaissance Faire reject who raided a harlequin's closet) has clearly decided the mistletoe overhead is a legal pre-authorization for the lean-in, while the girl in her layered blue skirt and red bodice appears to be calculating her escape route rather than getting swept off her feet. Two glowing paper lanterns hang overhead like the surveillance cameras of Christmas Past, bearing silent witness to this aggressively festive social contract. The whole scene radiates the energy of a school pageant that got slightly out of hand, and whoever signed off on 'Christmas Greetings' as the caption clearly decided that consent discourse was a problem for the next century.