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Freckles and His Friends, created by Merrill Blosser, began in 1915 as a single panel gag strip simply titled "Freckles," though it was renamed only a few short months into its run. It ultimately ended in 1971. Freckles started out as a young boy of 6 or 7, and eventually grew up to become a teenager. By the time of this particular strip, Blosser's assistant Henry Formhals had taken over art duties.

I assume that it's not the tree speaking in the second and last panel here, but something that's living in the tree. When I was a kid, my family would always get a real tree, and it was very common for us to get stowaway grasshoppers. Sometimes we would notice them as we were putting up the tree. Other times we wouldn't notice until it was already halfway decorated. We would generally get our tree the weekend after Thanksgiving, which is why it seems odd that this was published on the 23rd of December. That seems way too late to get a tree. I guess that's why they're surprised that someone else didn't get it.