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This is not a great strip, and it basically just reinforces the "lives of the rich and famous" theme that is present throughout Annibelle, but I think the joke is kind of clever. I guess she'll just have to use all of that winter gear when she gets back from the cruise.
Here's to hoping that you got everything you wanted for Christmas, and happy Boxing Day!
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Tales From the Great Book, by John Lehti, was a Sunday only comic strip that retold stories from the Bible. It had fairly wide circulation and had an impressive run, from 1954 to 1972. The focus was mainly on Old Testament stories, but as we see here, at times Lehti would cross over into New Testament territory as well (though with an emphasis on the Ten Commandments).
Merry Christmas, everyone!
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Going to bed on Christmas Eve is always difficult when you're a kid, though I never remember staying up all night and not getting any sleep at all. There was always the Christmas Eve sleep paradox: you don't want to go to sleep because you're too excited, but you want to go to sleep because then the time will seem to pass more quickly. I usually ended up somewhere in between, staying up later than normal but going to sleep eventually, and of course needing to have an extra nap in the middle of the day on Christmas. Christmas in our house was generally very relaxed and unstructured, so that was never a problem.
Also, spare a thought for Priscilla's dog, who didn't get a wink of sleep either and stayed up the whole time with her. That's a loyal pet if I ever saw one.
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One of the running gags in Priscilla's Pop involved Priscilla continually asking her pop to buy her a horse, and of course he always refused. Naturally, since her father was unwilling to get her one, she would also ask Santa Claus to bring her a horse every Christmas as well. This, of course, never happened, but as we can see here she went to every length necessary to ensure she would get one.
There's a kind of interesting kid logic going on here. It's true that it would be difficult to get a horse down a chimney, so it would make sense for Santa to bring it through the door instead. However, it seems that Priscilla thinks that the reason why Santa uses the chimney in the first place is because he doesn't have the ability to open doors himself, which is why she opened it for him. I wonder how she thinks he gets in and out of his own house. Maybe in her mind there's just a bunch of chimneys, and no doors. That would be interesting to see.
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Priscilla's Pop, by Al Vermeer, has a title that suggests it's supposed to be mainly about the father of Priscilla, yet it ends up being mostly about Priscilla herself. Priscilla was really just a kid who did kid things, but she did have a kind of charm that you might not see in other comic strips. The family was not well off, and her Pop, or Waldo as he was better known, was always worried about their mortgage payments and would only eat mashed potato sandwiches in order to save money to pay it off sooner.
That said, it seems he ate enough of them that they were able to have a pretty nice Christmas in 1955, complete with a cozy fireplace, until it was put out that is. As someone who did not grow up in a house with working fireplaces, I'm not really sure how they work in regards to Santa coming down the chimney. I would assume the magic that he uses to get down the chimney properly would also render him fireproof, so there wouldn't be a risk of him getting burned…