Apparently, nothing said Christmas in 1934 quite like a spent shotgun shell cartridge.

That year, the Bankers Life Insurance Co. of Nebraska sent out a creative little Christmas card to all its employees. The card entails a packet decorated with Santa's mug and a message: "NOT LOADED. But powerfully charged with the heartiest greetings of the season and the kindest wishes for 1935." Inside the packet is a Christmas-tree-green cartridge. Inside the shell, a rolled-up list of all the employees' names.

"It's clever, pretty neat," said Deb Arenz, senior museum curator of the Nebraska State Historical Society. "I don't know what the card is saying, especially since it came from a life insurance company."

The Christmas cartridge is one of several dozen cards now on display at the Nebraska History Museum. This is the exhibit's second year.

"We'd been doing the same thing for Christmas every year," Arenz said, "decorating the museum for the holidays. We felt like doing something new."

The society culled the best of its collection of 500-plus Christmas cards for the display. Cards ranging from the 1880s to the 1950s, from the cute to the creepy, the religious to the rowdy. Some homemade, some mass-produced. Some with poignant personal sentiments scrawled inside.

Wooden cards with fringe were popular in the 1880s. Religious cards were not too big until the decade after. Santa didn't become a staple until the turn of 20th century.

Christmas cards speak volumes about the time and place they came from, Arenz said. They reflect the tastes and fashions of the time in which they were created.

"But there are still some recurring themes throughout," she said. "The spring aspects, the romantic visions of Christmas and old times."

Even today, she said, "we still have Santa. We still have images from the past, pastoral scenes, images of your family. That's one of the interesting things about looking at Christmas cards. They really haven't changed a lot in their essence."

Reach Micah Mertes at 473-7395 or mmertes@journalstar.com.