I'm Sending You a Lemon for a Merry Christmas

This is a postcard addressed on the verso to "Mrs. D. P. Conklin, Highland Mills, N.J.," but otherwise there's no handwritten message, stamp, or postmark.

A lemon with a Christmas greeting might seem like a work of Dadaist art to us today, but this postcard actually had a specific meaning in the early twentieth century when it was created.

To "hand someone a lemon" meant—often with humorous or joking intentions—"scram," "beat it," or—in the terms of the fad it was associated with—"skidoo" or "23 skidoo."

In another postcard example, this connection between lemons and skidoo forms the basis of a message on a Valentine's Day card (see below): "To My Valentine / 'Tis a lemon that I hand you / And bid you now 'skidoo,' / Because I love another— / There is no chance for you!"

In a third instance, a postcard (below) depicts a hand reaching out to offer the viewer three lemons. You had to know, of course, that being handed a lemon signified "skidoo" in order to realize that the caption, "With my compliments," was meant sarcastically.

So how did lemons become associated with skidoo? A fourth postcard (below) may provide the answer. The postcard is printed in bright yellow and green colors, and lemons appear in the middle of the card and in each of its four corners. The puzzling message on the card begins,"Skidoo 23 is NOW 37," and then continues, "Turn around the card and I hand you a—."

Rotating the postcard so that the text is upside down reveals that the letters and numbers of "NOW 37" turn into the word "LEMON" (this trick is known as an ambigram, in case you were wondering). So, to put it all together, this postcard illustrated that being asked to skidoo—or more colloquially, telling someone "23 skidoo"—was the equivalent of being handed a lemon!

And, of course, the reverse was true—if you received a lemon, you'd better skidoo!