John Waters' Christmas Cards, 1964 - Present

December 18, 2023 2:42 PM

Every year, John Waters sends a personally signed Christmas card to a select list of friends [Xitter; Nitter]

John Waters [WikiPedia]
Selected John Waters, previously

posted by chavenet (14 comments total)

These are lovely! I’d seen a handful before, but never the full set.

Earlier this winter I went to a Tom of Finland exhibit and it featured a selection of his Christmas cards and they were something else. Here’s a positively demure example, the only one I could find online, but most of them were hilarious.
posted by Kattullus at 2:59 PM on December 18, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not sure what's in the thread as you can't see anything unless logged in to Twitter, but my favorite John Waters story is that he takes a Polaroid (least it was when I read it) of every single person who knocks on his door. Doesn't matter if it's a friend or UPS. He has thousands of them from over the years.

For a brief time, I lived with a sober retired-baker-sorta-gangster who made anyone who knocked on his door take a shot of tequila. He kept a bottle right by the door. The FedEx guy loved him. I asked if he'd gotten the idea from Waters. "Who?" he asked. He'd never heard of him.
posted by dobbs at 2:59 PM on December 18, 2023 [13 favorites]

dobbs, the Nitter link in the FPP seems to work for me, even logged out and in Incognito Mode.
posted by xedrik at 3:20 PM on December 18, 2023 [3 favorites]

This makes me so happy. For a number of reasons, actually. First, I’m a John Waters fan, and I am just happy to see this stuff, and second, this helps my argument that Christmas cards can count as mail art though no one is actually arguing with me about this. And I just like these!
posted by Tesseractive at 3:22 PM on December 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

(oh god i saw john waters and then a date with a dash in it and thought he had died and i was going to be so sad!)
posted by mittens at 3:54 PM on December 18, 2023 [5 favorites]

Another interesting John Waters tidbit is that he once hired an artist to create an installation piece in his house that is "the room of a bomb-making terrorist". So, he has a room in his house, with a velvet rope across the door-free doorway, in which is a "don't touch anything" imagining of what a room in a terrorist's house might be like. Waters also has a signed note from the artist indicating what it is in case his house is ever under investigation and subject to a search warrant.

This was pre-9/11. I have no idea if the room still exists or not.
posted by dobbs at 4:30 PM on December 18, 2023 [10 favorites]

I regret all of my life choices that have led to the unlikelihood that I will ever be on John Waters’ Christmas card mailing list.
posted by eviemath at 5:13 PM on December 18, 2023 [19 favorites]

John Waters once autographed a box of Jujyfruits that is now proudly displayed in my living room.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:40 PM on December 18, 2023 [11 favorites]

I think Waters would be pleased to know that the Bus named Desire (1998) will now take you from the historic New Orleans Mint out to the Walmart
posted by eustatic at 4:55 AM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

Playing his Christmas album every now and then
posted by DJZouke at 5:22 AM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I am from Baltimore, so John Waters is a local hero. Crybaby was filmed in my home town, and my daughter goes to the same high school that Waters (and Divine) attended when it was a junior high school.

My dad recently turned 75, and his best friends got him a toilet seat autographed by John Waters, and a picture of John Waters holding the toilet seat after signing it. (It says something like "think of me every time you take a shit"). Unsurprisingly, it is the greatest gift my father has ever received.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 7:22 AM on December 19, 2023 [15 favorites]

He seems like such a good guy. I enjoyed these photos he took with fans at a death metal show he was at.
posted by jonbro at 12:23 PM on December 19, 2023

Playing his Christmas album every now and then

He's a pretty good DJ: A John Waters Christmas.
posted by ovvl at 2:39 PM on December 19, 2023 [2 favorites]

I know more than one person who has just randomly run into John Waters on the streets of Baltimore (I'm in the DC area & have friends in Baltimore). I like that. Yes, when he does signings at Atomic Books, there will be lines around the block, but he's also just out there living his life.

The Steve Buscemi as John Waters is probably my favorite. That's perfect.

Imagine how cool it must feel to be on Waters' holiday card list ...
posted by edencosmic at 5:08 PM on December 19, 2023