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 Buffalo Express, December 24, 1920.  While you may have to replace the family gathered inside this home with a mass Zoom call this year, the sentiment about discord is very relevant when it comes to 2020.  In the right-hand panel, the dude Santa is talking to appears to be wearing one of cartoonist Rube Goldberg's less successful inventions. Kids, don't don live candles as part of your gay apparel, no matter how cool it might seem for an Instagram post or TikTok video.  St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 24, 1920. Another Goldberg cartoon found in papers that Christmas Eve listed off things kids didn't want or want to do for Christmas. Please don't force your kids to recite in video calls, unless they really, really want to. 

 Hamilton Times, December 24, 1909. Click on image for larger version. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the 1909 version of a holiday-themed zombie movie, where Santa is under siege from children transformed into the living dead who think jolly old St. Nick would make a good Christmas dinner. The expression on Santa's face suggests his effort to fend them off may be doomed.  Do you think that in their efforts to diversify their Christmas movies, Hallmark would consider a heartwarming holiday zom-com? This odd drawing, combined with last post's odd Inuit stories , lead us into an odd mixture of holiday items presented by the Hamilton Times, a Liberal-leaning paper which published from 1859 to 1920. Canadiana has a sampling of issues, primarily from 1907 to 1909 .  Hamilton Times, December 24, 1909. When a man is in pain and misery, you don't leave him (literally) hanging from wires just so you can run and grab a disbeliever.  Half-an-hour passed before Tommy return...

The Telegram , November 15, 1954. Click on image for larger version.  November 15, 1954: the day Torontonians began enjoying two long-running comic strips, courtesy of the Telegram. Peanuts  ( whose local debut I wrote about for Torontoist ) had been gaining popularity across North America since its debut four years earlier, while Marmaduke began causing mischief that year. Both strips migrated to the Toronto Star when the Tely folded in 1971. Peanuts is regarded as a comic strip classic; Marmaduke is admired for its longevity (creator Brad Anderson is still alive at age 90). The Great Dane's monotony has led papers to try and drop the strip--an act they don't always succeed in carrying out. When the Star attempted to dump it in 1999 , readers revolted. When people like, as the Star put it, the same two jokes told over and over again ("Marmaduke is a dog with some human qualities, and Marmaduke is gargantuan"), it's comfort food they will fight tenac...

  While searching though back issues of the Toronto News for holiday-related material for an upcoming Historicist column, I stumbled upon a cartoon that seemed to fall into the genre of strips/one-offs whose plot was built around getting one of the characters to say the title in the final panel. You be the judge as to whether this style of humour still cuts the mustard a century on.   The same page of the News found the gruff old Scot on the left passing judgement on the quality of pipes found at Toronto branches of United Cigar Stores. This stereotypical depiction appeared in the retailer's advertising of the period, with different captions under his satisifed visage to suit the ad copy.   News stories on the same page:   A bedroom fire at 69 DeGrassi Street destroyed a $20 feather mattress belonging to a Mrs. Dowling. Windsor dry goods merchant Joseph Appelbe won a partial appeal of a judicial dismissal of an injunction against the Erie Tobacco Compan...

All was going well until, distracted by further questioning from Sluggo, Nancy accidentally opened her eyes... Strip originally published August 5, 1953. Nancy © United Media - JB