It is the only possible explanation for their bizarre greeting cards.  (Just one more post about this, I promise.)

The card below is from the Victorian era.  It features an apparently affluent … turnip man.  Who wishes the reader “a Merry Christmas” with handheld stone tablet shaped like a heart.  (Is it a tombstone?  Why is their a flowering plant growing out of it?)

Now … if I had been this card’s creator, I would have at least added, “I hope all sorts of good things turnip for you in the New Year.”  Because that’s how I roll.