Judge, 1925-12-26 · page 5 of 37
Judge — December 26, 1925 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Christmas Down on the Farm" - Judge Magazine This satirical piece celebrates rural farm life during Christmas by contrasting it favorably with urban customs. The farmer-narrator humorously lists what farms *don't* have to do: no Christmas shopping murders, no sending greeting cards, no tipping strangers, no broken electric trains to exchange. **"The Christmas Hall of Fame"** section presents twelve impractical or useless gift items as jokes—things like "The Famous Unbreakable Tie," "Pillowless Plum Pudding," and "The Department-Store Santa Claus." All are labeled "Busts" (failures). The large cartoon shows Santa drowning in unwanted gifts, with the caption expressing desire for Santa to *take away* neighborhood items instead. The overall satire mocks urban Christmas consumerism and consumer culture, positioning rural simplicity as preferable to city materialism and its attendant social obligations.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Christmas Down on iw the Farm was readin’ a piece in the paper *tother day about how unhappy us farmers was at Xmas time. It said we was snowed in and over- worked and lonesome and that city people ought to shed a tear for us during the happy Yuletide. eet I don’t know about that, neighbor. We ain’t so bad off. First thing, we don’t have no Christmas shopping to do. I have heard there were more murders the first part of December than any other time. We don’t have no trouble that way because all we’ve got to do is to decide what we want in the cattylog and then fill out the ROIDERED DUSTING-BONNET — COLLAR-Box FROM AUNT EMMA order sheet, inclose a check and send y “> it to Chicago. Nobody is even Y / spoke to cross. We don’t have to spend the first week after Christmas writin’ letters to people we forgot to send greeting cards to, tellin’ ’em how glad we was to get theirs and did they get ourn? We don’t have to tip people we MALEVOLENT DRUM SENT THE INFAMOUS 8 never saw until a day or two before BY UNCLE Oscar SLIPPERS Christmas. In fact, we don’t have / 3 to tip anybody except the mail man and he’d just as soon take it out in a y y chicken. VA ie 4 We don’t have to find out why in i ve h—1 (swear word) the new electric train won’t run. We don’t have to take it back a oT couple of days later and exchange i a —— a ip! ys } ge it THE Good-FoR-MoTHING PIPE THE SENSIBLE GIFT FoR THE DEPARTMENT- STORE SANTA for another train somebody has just RACK LITTLE Witte “claus THE CHRISTMAS HALL OF FAME They’re all “Busts.” “yp i, i We don’t have to go around to the neighbors and drink what is called Christmas cheer. We don’t have to eat dinner with relatives. We kin just set at home and enjoy ourselves. We don’t have to take one person’s presents and slip around and give em to somebody else, like we hea it’s done in the big cities. Come to think it over, I don’t understand why more people don’t take up farming ’long "bout this time of year. For good solid comfort there’s nothing like Christmas on a snowed-in farm. Homer Croy Rad We don’t want Santa to bring us athing, but there're a few things in our Many a man wouldn’t mind having neighborhood we'd like him to take away with him. his kin taken off his back. comicbooks.com