Life, 1918-12-05 · page 41 of 76
Life — December 5, 1918 — page 41: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a Christmas-themed moral tale rather than political satire. A child recounts waking on Christmas morning to find Santa Claus has filled stockings with presents. However, the narrator reveals they've decided to donate their own stockings to a poor Belgian girl named Angelina who lacks warm clothing in a cold climate. The illustration shows what appears to be a formal church or palace wedding scene, depicting "her mother's so conventional—she insisted on a church wedding," suggesting the text includes multiple unrelated Christmas stories on this page. The piece exemplifies early 20th-century sentimental charitable messaging—using Christmas as a framework to encourage children toward generosity and awareness of less fortunate children in war-affected Europe (likely WWI-era Belgium, which experienced severe hardship). The satire is gentle: mocking the narrator's initial selfishness while celebrating their ultimate selflessness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Christmas Life Stockings / self, because He has brought me lots of presents \ e take them, ing at the stock xs that were hanging on their Vou welcome to the ste was full of presents and of toys and picture you'd better take the mufiler and my se air of shoes © never filled the stockings that were dangling init So he thanked me, and he took ther ww said d-bye c took a lot of presents and he piled them up Lelow And he chirruped to his reindeer, and they galloped thr he waved to me and whispered, with a twinkle in his the sky eye While I watched them from the window; and I saw them 1 didn’t fill the stockings, and I'm going to tell you whisk away why With a million pairs of stockings heaped and tumbled in | There's a better way to fill them, as I know that you'll the sleigh! . gree; So I guess there's lots of children that have done the same } There's a little girl in Belgium, which is ‘way across the sea, aa aie. {her name is Angelina; she has heaps of flaxen hair, And have sent their Christmas stockings to a land across Rut she hasn't any stockings, and would like to own a pair, the sea. Vor it's pretty cold in Belgium, and @ friend is hard to find; For I don’t think any stockings can be half as good as those So | think I'l take your stockings, if you really do not That are keeping frost and chilblains from the little Belgian mind.” toes! Irthur Guiterman, comicbooks.com