Life, 1921-12-01 · page 47 of 58
Life — December 1, 1921 — page 47: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical comic strip personifies a Christmas card, following its journey through several women's hands. The joke exposes the hypocrisy and cheapness lurking beneath Christmas's veneer of goodwill. The card gets passed along between acquaintances—each woman regifting it or reusing it to avoid buying new cards. Mrs. Eckings cuts off the previous inscription so she can reuse it. Mrs. Drinkwater is upset because she'd sent a nicer gift (an embroidered handkerchief) expecting reciprocal generosity but received only a cheap, secondhand card. The final irony: Mr. A. (presumably a husband) uses the card's back to calculate his Christmas expenses, then tosses it into the fireplace. The satire mocks the gap between Christmas's professed message of spreading "cheer and good will" and the actual behavior—penny-pinching, resentment, and transactional gift-giving among supposedly genteel women. It's a cynical take on commercialized holiday observance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Autobiography of a Christmas Card Iam a little Christmas Card, noth- ing deckled-edged at all, but of an honest, hard-working family. My mission in life is to help spread cheer and good will at Christmas time. Mrs. B. seemed to think so, too, when she found me beside her grapefruit. “Bother,” she said. “Now, T'll have to send her one, and I thought I was done.” For good measure she slipped me along to Mrs. Cuttle, Mrs. Eckings, to whom Mrs. D. sent me, did not hide her opinion of people who wrote on Christmas cards so that they could not be used again, However, she found that by cutting off my back page with the offending inscription, I would do very well for Mrs. Aker. It was very pleasant lying on the counter, to observe the happy Christmas faces of the women as they crowded and fought for us. I fell to the lot of Mrs. Aker, one of the best fighters there. Mrs. Cuttle at once tried to de- cipher my price mark. “Aha!” she muttered, “I might have known that Jane Bostwick wouldn’t hesi. tate to send out ten-cent cards, and she sent me along forthwith to Mrs. Drinkwater. ‘When Mrs. Aker saw me she didn’t hesitate to say that I was the ugliest card she had ever received, but on the whole just what was to be expected from a person with Ettie Eckings’ lack of taste. And the worst of it was it was too late to send me to anyone else, As Mrs. Aker says, she has very good taste and she appeared very much pleased with me. In fact she remarked that it seemed a pity to waste me on that old cat, Mrs. Bostwick. Mrs. Drinkwater, I am sorry to” say, was rather ugly about me. That very morning she had sent an embroidered handkerchief to Bella Cuttle and, if the truth were known, she had figured on getting more than a card in exchange, Considering my unfortunate ser- vices in spreading peace and good- will, fate might have assigned me a better end. Mr. A. picked me up and figured his Christmas debits all over my back. After which he mut- tered “Damn” and tossed me on the blazing yule log. comicbooks.com