"[A] card bearing the image of a near-naked man being... nailed through his hands and feet onto a wooden crucifix is a markedly less pleasant piece of mail."

Small error here. He was nailed to a cross, not a crucifix.

A crucifix, specifically, is a piece of statuary or jewelry representing Jesus on the cross. If the Christ figure is present, it's a crucifix. If it's just the cross, that just a cross.

I suppose if you wanted to nit-pick, you could argue that the actual Jesus on the actual cross was a crucifix, but in that case, Jesus was not nailed TO the crucifix, he was PART OF the crucifix. (But that's a nit-pick, and false in my opinion.)

A crucifix is a representation of the event, not the thing he was nailed to.

It's still unpleasant, but I think that's on purpose.