Life, 1911-12-07 · page 64 of 112
Life — December 7, 1911 — page 64: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes Life magazine's own repetitive holiday content. The main text mocks "My Happiest Xmas"—an annual feature where celebrities contribute sentimental Christmas memories—as predictable and insincere ("uninteresting falsehoods signed by notables"). The writer particularly ridicules "The Actors' Xmas," an illustration showing struggling performers sitting on trunks at railway stations, presented as pathetic and tear-jerking. The satire suggests this melodramatic imagery appears year after year unchanged ("endures through all the reactions in art"). An advertisement parodies the magazine itself, asking for a newspaper willing to report genuinely important news rather than pander to public taste for scandal and gossip about wealthy New Yorkers and industrial barons. The cartoons illustrate this critique: figures under mistletoe and an owl reinforce the clichéd sentimentality, while "Willie Banking His First Wages" depicts ordinary life replacing holiday fantasy—the magazine's implicit point being that authentic human experience matters more than manufactured sentiment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
UNDER THE MISTLETOE knife. There is good red blood in that picture when you get it right. But get it right. Turning the pages rapidly we come to a staunch old friend, “ My Happiest Xmas.” This is a sym) posed of uninteresting signed by notables. How would be if it were all true! is, “W Xmas Really c It is usually signed Peter B. Madison, but this time there is some other sanctimonious scribe down as the author. This, you see, gives a dash of deep seriousness to the general air of holiday cheer. It is the Uplift! Qo-o-oh! Surely they would never leave this out, “The Actors’ Xmas.” These are all actors sitting on their trunks on the bleak railway station Would it not draw tears from a stone? It is pathetic to think of the poor actors so far from their homes and all the cafés closed probably. ‘This illustration endures through all the reactions in art. Why, you say, do not the editors get good new stuff? ase they do not wish to go a ds of the American people a bowie ium, com- falsehoods weird it the hy rural community—the Village Idi it were—must he served at Nmas *LIPE: But look again at the actors. Chilled to the bone! Poor turkeyless mum- mers! Will the How cold and U-gh—h—h! ‘annot stand it—it is so sad! My lip is trembling. Close the book quick- ly. Ah, what do we see? the cover is the colored chef of the Cream of Hay ad. How life-like he is! 1f he had more repression and fewer teeth he would not be so bad! He has a big turkey on a platter and it scems it is stuffed with cream of * Count his teeth, Rollo! I wonder what he is barking about? How merry he is!’ Ha—ha—ha—ha! What would we do without the Xmas Numbers? KM, train never come? cheerless it is! Here on An Advertisement ANTED—A Newspaper. Need urgent. Important things are happening, the news of which is not disseminate: We need something that will take an entirely new view of what is going on. Something that will not pander to the degenerate taste for seandl, crime, platitudinous —_inter- industrial barons, prize “SUCH A DAYTIME or ir!” VE fights, Wall Street, divorces of the idle rich, gossip of soc! ficial New York City. | i IZ y and other super- Address Constant: Reader, Z VORTRAIT OF WILLIE ON HIS WAY TO BANK HIS FIRST WAGES comicbookMen I