Life, 1919-12-04 · page 23 of 80
Life — December 4, 1919 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical piece imagining Christmas as a labor dispute. Santa Claus, depicted as a union organizer, leads a strike against government takeover of Christmas. The strikers include: - **Santa's reindeer** (protesting unfair labor conditions and refusing to work with "enemy aliens" Donder and Blitzen) - **Christmas toys** (claiming they're always "tied up" in the Christmas movement) - **The moon and snow** (striking on principle) The satire mocks **1920s labor unions and government intervention**. By treating Christmas—a sacred holiday—as a labor negotiation, it ridicules both union demands for better working conditions and government attempts at economic control. The punchline: Congress abolishes Christmas rather than negotiate. The illustration shows Santa as a worker at a camp or construction site, emphasizing the absurdist inversion of sacred holiday into industrial labor dispute. This reflects anxieties about labor radicalism and government overreach during the early 20th century.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
KASIM LIFE: REGS 8 4 The Great Christmas Strike EFORE act the necessary legislation for the taking over of Christmas by the government, the great Christmas strike was called. The strike order, promul- gated by S. Claus, International Or- izer of the J ed Order of Christmas Funct found the Congress was able to en- public, as usual, totally unprepared. It was as unlooked-for as a receipted bill on the day after Christma nearly so welcome. Organizer Claus struck because the Present arrangement, requiring that he work one full a year, was not only contrary to union rules, but kept him away from home on a holiday, thus depriving him of an opportunity to at- , only not BRINGING HOME THE YULE-LoG tain that high standard of living which is the acknowledged \merican workingman Six of the Eight struck because they would not get into right of the Tiny Reindeer harness any Blitzen, longer with Donder and protesting that the pair were enemy aliens, The Miniature Sleigh struck because it had never been equipped with a full crew, as prescribed by law The Toys struck plaining that, they had in sympathy, ex in the nature of things, always been tied up in the Christmas movement The Moon struck habit from force of The Snow struck on grounds of its own. wasn't And so there any Christmas that year, and the sorrow among t Con- federalization Seeing this, that its people was great gress realized plan would have been a political blun- der. So the next year it abolished Christmas. comicbooks.com