Life, 1913-12-04 · page 43 of 112
Life — December 4, 1913 — page 43: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines poetry, humor cartoons, and satirical editorial commentary on Christmas gift-giving practices. **The cartoons:** The lower-left sketch depicts working-class men complaining about financial strain—one protests having to pay installments on an engagement ring while also buying Christmas presents. The larger illustration shows a domestic scene where a woman (likely playing a maid or servant) greets Santa, suggesting ironic disappointment that even gift-givers arrive late or unprepared. **The editorial satire:** The main article mocks women's magazines for publishing endless "how-to" guides for making useful homemade Christmas presents—embroidered items, crafts, etc. The author argues people ignore this advice, preferring to buy anything disposable. He satirically suggests magazines instead teach *recipients* how to repurpose useless gifts (converting slippers into rugs, valances into receipts). **The point:** This critiques both consumer culture's wasteful gift-buying and the gap between idealized domestic labor promoted in women's magazines and actual behavior. It's commentary on class anxiety, marriage economics, and commercialization of Christmas.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
De Senectute Winter snores in the chimney- flue, And the shivering days draw nigh, ‘And there's nothing to do for me and you But poke at the fire and sigh, While Love sits mending a worn-out shoe And wiping a w And thinking of times gone by: Let's light our pipes as old men do, And, while the storm winds cry, Talk over the days that once we knew, And sing a song thereby, Till Love forgets her worn-out shoe, And lifts a smiling eye, And gives old Time the lie. Madison Catcein. “aIn’T DAT ENOUGH? I'M GETTING N I TINK OF ME PAYING TS ON FR CHRISTMAS PRESENT FER ER GOIL WOT'S ALREADY ENGAGED!" “OH, DEAR, SANTA! 1 THOUGHT YOU WERE NEVER COMING!” Useful Christmas Presents O R very best thanks are due to the woman's maga- zines for their many earnest efforts to show people tow to make useful Christmas presents. These magazines lave done their work well. They have figured many tiliteus things down to the utmost detail of shirr and tuck and cross-stitch, so that there could be no mis- understancing. But it has all been in vain. The fault is with the people. They positively refuse to make useful Christmas presents, all Spugs to the contrary notwith- standing. There is only one sane thing to be done under the circumstances, Let the magazines take a new tack. Let them understand once and for al that the people will not make useful presents. Let them desist, then, from spoiling good paper by printing these articles. Instead, let them establish departments cn “How to Make Christmas Pres- ents Useful”. This would fix the responsibility whence it couldn’t get away. Givers don’t care. They buy any- thing at all—and glad to have it over—because they know they are to be rid of the stuff at once. But the recipients, ah—it is the recipients who need a helping hand. If the magazines will only tell the minister how to make a new dining room rug out of six pairs of slippers and three smoking jackets; or if they will tell careworn hus- bands how to convert chenille valances into receipted bills; or if they will give a recipe for making satin- lined toilet sets work as well as they look to an inhabitant of the ‘Fiji Islands, then will these magazines have an utterly wide appeal than which nothing is dearer to the heart of the ramificatory editor. E.0. 4.