Victorian Christmas Card Children with Holiday Signs 1880s

The children seem convinced they're part of something important—a living billboard army marching through the snow to spell out 'X-MAS HAS COME' across their individual sandwich boards, because apparently the postal service hadn't been invented yet, or Santa just loves child labor. In the foreground, a boy ominously announces 'There's going to be a' with a pudding illustration, a girl in a red cape clutches a sign reading 'We have caught a Goose' next to an actual white goose, and a beret-wearing child proudly displays 'Old Santa Claus' alongside a portrait of the man himself—together forming what can only be described as the world's first and most unhinged Christmas press release. One child inexplicably carries an umbrella in a snowstorm, presumably the PR manager of this whole operation, and every single one of them has the serene, dead-eyed calm of someone who has accepted their fate as human punctuation.