Universities: We didn't send Nazi Santa cards!

Houstonist has gotten all manner of Christmas cards this year: cards with cartoon characters, cards with poinsettias, cards with manger scenes and kittens and robots and sledding Victorians and lots of gold foil. But so far, we haven't received a card depicting Santa as a Nazi. But maybe we should just sit tight and see what happens: According to KTRK, someone's sending out such cards and pretending that they're coming from local universities.

The cards feature a picture of St. Nick inside a festive border of holly — but he's sporting a Nazi armband, and on the facing panel is text that gives intolerant views on religion and race and promotes Adolf Hitler. Some of the cards bore the return address of the Young Conservative Club at the University of St. Thomas, but as Channel 13 reports, there is no such club at the school. What's more, the return address lists the university's name as "St. Thomas University," which isn't correct. Other cards have a Rice University return address, but officials at both schools say the cards didn't come from their campuses. "As a Catholic university we deplore racism and intolerance, it is particularly regrettable in this holiest of season," St. Thomas leaders said in a statement.

Dena Marks of the Anti-Defamation League said the fake return addresses are just a way for the people behind the cards to get the cards noticed: "White supremacists, people like that, know that most people reject their message so they have to resort to trickery in order to get people to open these things up," she said. Maybe next Christmas, the people responsible will just opt for schmaltzy puppy cards instead.