"Bright Star of Hope" vintage Christmas postcard (with cat)

As the final countdown to Christmas continues, this vintage postcard, mailed to Alice McClintock way back in the day, features a woman in green, a young boy in yellow, a young girl in pink and red, and, stealing the show, a cat who doesn't give a damn about any of it. 

It's possible that these three are attempting to break into a house through a window and the cat is doing very little to stop them. 

Or maybe I'm just overthinking it all.

The text on the postcard states:

Loving Christmas Greetings

On this Christmas kind greeting I send thee,

My wish would keep joy by they side,

With Fortune's glad sun ever shining,

And the bright Star of Hope for they guide.

Simon [or insert a turn-of-the-century struggling writer's name here] probably got paid half a shilling to write that hokum before being told to move on to the Easter postcard verses. Or to go find Bartleby.

And, no, it's not a famous verse or a stolen poem. Google tells me: "No results found for 'With Fortune's glad sun ever shining.' " So we're making SEO history tonight on the blog again. Break out the saké.

This week in the reality that is 2020, the "bright Star of Hope" is the alignment of Jupiter and Saturn, as seen from the Earth. They haven't come this close, from our vantage, since 1623, and, according Marina Koren in The Atlantic, "The last time the planets appeared this close and could be seen from the ground was in 1226," when Notre-Dame de Paris was still in its early decades of construction. 

Here's a look at the back of the postcard: