Christmas Eve

Two interlocking holly wreaths divide the nation's anguish on a wartime Christmas. On the left, a woman in mourning black kneels at a frost-lit window, a child asleep in the bed behind her, hands pressed in prayer. On the right, a Union soldier hunches over a campfire in a bare winter wood, rifle across his knees, gazing at what appears to be a small portrait or locket — the same family, reversed. Between them, at the wreaths' crossing, a church gate suggests both sanctuary and separation. The Stars and Stripes drapes a boat at bottom center. Above both scenes arcs the legend CHRISTMAS EVE in holly-wreathed letters. Nast makes no editorial argument through caricature here; the argument is structural and sentimental — the war has cleaved every hearth in two, and prayer is the only bridge across that distance.