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When I was a kid, my love of comic strips and desire to be a cartoonist came from reading Calvin and Hobbes. The older I got, the more I appreciated it, and the more ways I was able to appreciate it. The writing and artwork were of a quality that had not been seen in newspapers for many years, and after it ended, it would still be a few years before any comic strip would compare to it, at least in my mind.

One thing that Bill Watterson always did at Christmas season was show the difficulties Calvin always had with Santa Claus. As a six-year-old kid, he obviously believes in Santa, and often writes letters to him, as we see here. He is often troubled by the need to be on Santa's "Good" list, though his only motivation for doing this is to receive more presents. This should give us pause to consider our own actions. Are we being good because we want to be good, or to receive some kind of reward for doing so?