This Christmas postcard was exchanged between schoolmates.

It was not mailed, which complicates the task of interpreting the address abbreviations of the sender.

Mr. Alfred Schroeder lived in “Minn Lake”, within the state of “Minn”.

The large state of Minnesota is covered with thousands of lakes – I feared that the location would be difficult to find.

Not so. The small city of Minnesota Lake is found on the border of Blue Earth and Faribault Counties in south central Minnesota.

The community had a post office since 1858, although the town building lots were not laid out until 1866.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Lake,_Minnesota

The face of the postcard is a drawing of a white cat grasping a branch of holly.

Beneath the green leaves is legend, “A Merry Christmas”.

I cannot find an initial of the artist, nor a mark of the publisher.

We do see that the image was one of the “Xmas Cats” series.

On the reverse, we find the signature of the sender – “your schoolmate Elsie Schulz”.

Because the postcard was preserved throughout his life, we assume that Arnold was pleased to receive the greeting.

One hopes that he and Elsie, and all the students of the school enjoyed a wonderful holiday.