Surprise! Christmas "sweets" that aren't

Old copies of Better Homes and Gardens used to have little tear-out sheets of recipes that could be added to their big, binder-style cookbooks. Today's sheet from the December 1937 issue stowed away somewhere until it found me, so I scanned it just for you. For December, it offers up a "winter salads" section. The front of the page has cute little jiggly "Christmas Salad" stars that look like they might be a Jell-O encased fruit salad.

No such luck, though. The lemon Jell-O might look like a red flavor, but that's just because it's colored with beet juice! Add vinegar, diced beets and cucumbers, a bit of minced onion, and plenty of horseradish, and those little stars will be an unpleasant surprise for any midwestern kid who is used to "salad" being a code word for dessert when Jell-O is involved. Merry Christmas!

The reverse side gives you a green mold to pair with the red. (Well, it's gray in the picture, but I assume it would be green in real life.)

All those grapes and cherries in the middle probably make you think sweet, right? Well, not so much....

The lemon Jell-O gets filled out with equal parts mayonnaise, avocado, and whipped cream... So maybe weirdly green mayo, without an herbaceous flavor one might expect? Or maybe overly goopy avocado? In any case, it's sure to distract you from noticing that the cherries and grapes have been marinated in French dressing until after you've put some on your plate and know you can't dump them back... At least, not while anyone else is watching. 

Maybe this is a holiday spread for somebody who wishes every day were April Fool's Day? Hopefully the guests will know enough to watch out for tricks...