Puck Christmas Number 1894

Frank Marion Hutchins's cover for Puck's Christmas number (Vol. XXXVI, No. 926, price 25 cents) places the magazine's imp mascot—here a rosy-cheeked child bundled in a sleigh and clutching a decorated Christmas tree—at the center of a winter skating scene. Two fashionably dressed young women in fur-trimmed coats and broad-brimmed hats tow him forward on the ice, their ribboned reins streaming behind them. The composition flatters its middle-class readership: the skaters are stylish, vigorous, and cheerful, embodying the era's idealized New Woman without any satirical edge. There is no overt political argument here; the cover functions instead as seasonal advertising, presenting Puck itself as the gift being delivered—literally hauled into holiday parlors by attractive modern women.