Have a Great Depression and A Happy New Year
18 Dec 2008 1:04 PM
WASHINGTON/SYDNEY, Dec 17 AFP/AAP - Artist and comedy writer Andrew Shaffer has tapped into an improbable market: he began designing and selling Great Depression and atheist Christmas cards.
"I always thought that Charles Darwin looked like Santa Claus," Shaffer said from his home in Iowa, in the US midwest, explaining how he had come up with the idea for Christmas cards for atheists.
"So last year, I put together an image of Darwin with some presents under his arm and started selling it alongside my other edgy Christmas cards."
Sales of Darwin Claus outstripped sales of any other card Shaffer was marketing, leading him to think that "maybe there are atheists out there who want to send Christmas cards".
So he started an entire line of cards for them.
The 30-year-old turned entrepreneur has also launched a line of Depressing Times cards, featuring images from the 1930s, when the United States grappled with the Great Depression, and humorous verse contrasting those very difficult times with today's economic slump.
One card shows a woman cutting cloth against a pattern and has the caption on the front: "I made you a present."
Inside the card is the message: "But I had to burn it in a trashcan to stay warm -- Have a Great Depression and a Happy New Year."
Another shows the evolution of man which starts with an ape-like figure and ends with a metamorphosis into Santa Claus.
Shaffer also has gay cards, often featuring the rainbow colours that have come to symbolise the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities.
Shaffer insists he did not create the cards to offend anyone or to scare small children, as the card that declares "The good news is that Santa is real" but "the bad news is that he's dead" might do.
"I expected people would be offended a little bit by the atheist cards, even if I didn't feel I was mocking Christian figures or Jesus or anything like that," he said.
"I was mocking the secular side of Christmas -- Santa Claus, Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer -- and in fact, I've had a lot of people who are traditional Christians who have bought the atheist cards for friends, because they think they are funny," he said.
But he has taken some flak over the Great Depression cards, he admitted.
"Some people felt I was knocking people who were not well-off, but I came up with those cards the weekend of the $US700 billion ($A994.74 billion) bailout, when people on Wall Street were losing their jobs.
"Then, it was OK for the people on Main Street to mock. Now it's a little less funny because now it's the people on Main Street who are losing their jobs," he said.
This year, though, sales are up five times compared with 2007, when Shaffer started the greeting card business. The cards are sold directly to the consumer via the www.orderofstnick.com website.
Shaffer is an unlikely artist and comedy writer. Armed with an MBA, he decided not to go into investment banking.
Instead he studied creative writing at the prestigious Iowa Writer's Workshop. His cards have been featured on the Comedy Central television channel.
Judging by media coverage linked on his website, business is booming.
He's been featured in the American and UK press and even on Russian television.
