Life, 1922-12-07 · page 17 of 80
Life — December 7, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous cross-section illustration satirizing the chaotic day *after* Christmas in a typical American household. The cartoon depicts the domestic discord that follows holiday celebration: **The satire targets:** - Post-Christmas family tension (bickering guests, strained relationships) - Materialism (Myrtle calculating gift profits/losses; concern over "discarded" presents) - Generational friction (aunts negotiating with a demanding child over a broken doll) - Exhaustion and regret (Father's depleted liquor stock, Grandfather's overindulgence, Aunt Isobel's silent resentment, Mother's forgotten thank-you cards) - Grandma's pointless busywork The opening line parodies the famous poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," inverting the magic and peace of Christmas Eve into the messy reality of the day after. The humor lies in recognizing universal family dysfunction masked by holiday sentimentality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ce “°Twas the night after Christmas And all through the house——” N the guestroom Cousins Olga and Wilbert, in belligerent whispers, are trying to settle the point whose idea it was anyway of spending Christmas with relatives, Myrtle is conducting a little research work in the price marks of her gifts, preparatory to striking a profit and loss balance for the day. In the nursery a delegation of aunts are trying to hold _a peace conference with little Pet, who is de- manding her favorite doll with the broken head and left foot missing, surreptitiously discarded by the family the day before. Below, grandma is tidying up, picking up pieces of paper and string and putting them down somewhere else. Mother is engaged in remembering all the people to whom she forgot to send cards. Grand- father announces at intervals that he ate too much dinner, while Aunt Isobel, ever since the distribution of gifts, has maintained a stony silence. Father, who has been sent down-cellar to look for the gift that must have got mixed up with the dis- carded tissue paper, is wondering how he could ever have let the Christmas spirit carry him so far as to unlock his private stock when those wolves, Cousins Frank and Harry, were in the house. comicbooks.com