CSotD: And so this is Christmas
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You’ll note Santa’s helmet at the left. This banner was from 1944, 80 years ago, six months after D-Day and right in the heart of the Battle of the Bulge, which explains the light in the window at the right. The war was also in the heart of most comic strips on Christmas that year.
Race Riley, a wartime strip by Milburn Rosser, hit a nice tone of nostalgia. More established strips had their main character serving overseas and would start with a homesick panel and end with the folks back home similarly wishing for things to be safely over.
The Neighbors panel for the day is so out of character for the normally lighthearted domestic comedy that it heightens the impact of his message.
Side Glances didn’t mark the holiday but instead commented on the changing scene. I like the fact that he’s not questioning her bona fides, nor is she boasting of her contribution.
The panel is simply noting the change in the traditional workplace. “This is how it is.”
The day brought a taste of bad news for nearly everyone, a hint of the sort of crushing news being delivered to some individual families that holiday.
Not that we don’t have our own worries today, as Stellina Chen (Cartoon Movement) notes the unholy alliance being made among the billionaire class that appears to be divvying up the nation, and the world.
Deb Milbrath echoes Chen’s message of a sellout, adding to the number of kings coming to the manger, and adding the thought that their sense of obligation is more pragmatic, and cowardly, than spiritual.
Not that the spiritual is being neglected: Dear Leader is having a prayer gathering the day before his inauguration for anyone who donates $100,000.
I’m hoping Jesus will be amongst them.
With a rope’s end in his hand and kicking over tables.
And speaking of kicking over tables, Marc Murphy offers a value-based reflection on the season, with a take on Christmas charity that steps beyond the usual reminders to give at other times of the year as well:
It’s great that churches and Girl Scouts and other regular people do this but it’s a dark joke on all of us pretending to be good people that there are food pantries in the first place, and that they’re Good News at Christmas. It’s food. We’re not at war. The potato crop hasn’t failed. Billionaires and countless millionaires and corporations with record profits live among us but our hearts are warmed to hear that there are spare cans of beans and some cornflakes available down at the fire house if you need them, until they run out.
Frazz (AMS) has had plenty of Christmas-themed cartoons leading up to the holiday, but this morning offers a quieter reflection.
This view of other Christmas moments is close to my heart, since reporting is a seven-day, 365-days-a-year job. I used to alternate years, working the holiday when my kids were at their mother’s and taking off the next year when I had them at home.
The “Who’s Working on Christmas?” stories were a requirement, and usually pretty much the same, but there were exceptions. A local diner let staff off, thinking the day would be slow and they could handle it themselves, but found the place overwhelmed, whereupon patrons stood up and began bussing tables and taking orders.
And there was the fire chief who reported on a fellow who decided to burn the wrapping paper but found the wind kept blowing out his match, so he sheltered the pile beside his house where it set fire to his vinyl siding. The benefit of a small-town volunteer department was that, while they all had to get up from dinner to answer the alarm, they didn’t seem at all surprised that it had happened to this particular fellow.
And there were the ethical perils of Chinese hospitality: After a “Who’s working the holiday?” story featured a local Chinese takeout place, I’d always find an extra spring roll slipped into my order. The threat to my journalistic neutrality wasn’t enough to make me insult Amy Zhang by trying to refuse her sweet generosity.
But there was an earlier year when, as a talk show host, I was one of the people working on Christmas and ended up intervening in a suicide attempt. I’ve replayed that night mentally every Christmas since and been once again grateful to have come out on the winning side.
This morning, it’s just me and the dog and, as seen in Off the Mark (AMS), she thinks every day is Christmas. Her enthusiasm makes the days good, particularly since, when I’m slogging through the snow at the park like Dr. Zhivago, she’s dancing around like the Sugar Plum Fairy.
I’ll have dinner with elder son tonight and will bring her back a treat, but she’ll be more delighted to have me home again than by whatever I bring, whether it’s gravy-laden or a dry crust.
How I’d love to dwell in her world!
Elsewhere
I’ve been reading James Thurber’s The Years With Ross, his memoir of founding New Yorker editor Harold Ross and the early years of the magazine. One anecdote he shares is that Ross didn’t get this Peter Arno cartoon and was furious when, after it had been published full-page, he found out why the back seat of the car hadn’t been stolen along with the rest of it.
I ran the cartoon here a few years ago and was surprised that several people didn’t get it then, either. Granted, you can’t just lift the back seat out of a car today like you could in the 1920’s, but I’d expect them to have seen American Graffiti, in which Toad’s borrowed car is stolen while he is attempting to be similarly occupied.
Thurber also mentions that this was Helen Hokinson’s first cartoon in the magazine, in 1925, and it set the mood for her prosperous matron. I’d say it also captures the magazine’s trend to grab onto whatever was happening out there among the hoi polloi.
Here’s the reference, and if it wasn’t being pitched to the New Yorker crowd, they likely took the A-train and went to hear the Blue Five up in Harlem, which makes me love Hokinson’s take even more.
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