Life — December 2, 1920 — page 53: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a single-panel cartoon from *Life* magazine (December 2, 1920) depicting a domestic holiday scene. A young woman reminds her mother to order mistletoe for Christmas decorations. The mother dismissively replies that ordering mistletoe is unnecessary—"like carrying coals to Newcastle" (an idiom meaning doing something pointless, since Newcastle was a major coal-producing region). The joke's implication: the house apparently has *so many* young men visiting or present that mistletoe is already plentiful and unnecessary as a romantic device. The illustration shows multiple fashionably dressed women entertaining male visitors in what appears to be an affluent home, suggesting the household's popularity or the women's romantic appeal makes additional mistletoe redundant. The cartoon satirizes 1920s dating culture and young women's social freedoms in the post-WWI era.