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These are the first two pages of a short-run Christmas series commissioned by King Feature Syndicate in 1948. It's been a common tradition over the years for syndicates to order these kinds of Christmas series, though it's become less common more recently. The themes of these series vary, and while some of them are of the Santa Claus, elves, and reindeer variety, there were many that took the religious approach. This series was done by Hal Foster, who was a devout Christian himself and therefore quite comfortable with the material. It's unusual, though, as it was a large format with only one illustration each day and a caption which told the story as contained in the Bible. It's definitely the best format for Foster's beautiful and striking images, though.

Hal Foster is best known for creating the Prince Valiant comic strip, though he never sought out a career in cartooning. He was originally an illustrator, and doing quite well at it. He was asked to draw some il…

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Nancy demonstrates an impulse that I think we've all had at one time or another. Some actors seem to always play a certain type of person, and we come to expect that of most of them, so it's a bit jarring at times when we see one playing against type. I've certainly had that experience before. It would definitely be difficult if you recognized the person playing Santa Claus as someone who had not been so kind and jolly in a different role. It seems like the Santa outfit would only be a disguise and a way to sneak into and rob the toy store.

Interestingly, this is a joke that Bushmiller had used previously, in a strip that was published 12 years earlier:

He just updated it to be used with Santa Claus. It still works, though, in my opinion, and it isn't a very surprising thing to see. Cartoonists who have been doing their comic strips for quite a while do tend to reuse many jokes they had used before. In fact, legacy cartoonists drawing a comic strip created by s…

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Here's Major Hoople again, doing as he does and telling young Alvin a number of obviously untrue stories of his life. I guess it must get pretty boring around the boarding house, because Major Hoople has to invent stories to keep everyone entertained. Either that, or he makes up the stories in order to hide the real truth of his criminal past. Who was Major Hoople, really? What has he done? Who is he running from? We'll never hear it from his own mouth, I guess.

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Our Boarding House, created by Gene Ahern, centered around the residents of a boarding house belonging to Martha Hoople. Here, we see her husband Major Amos B. Hoople attempting to procure some holiday money with as little work as possible. As someone with no money for the holidays myself, I quite understand his predicament. It's probably a bit too late to try to get a job as a guy in a Santa Claus suit now, though.

Major Hoople was fond of telling outlandish stories to all who would listen, so I hope he listens to the kids who speak to him instead of talking their ears off. Interestingly, just as many people these days refer to the Peanuts comic strip as "Charlie Brown," Major Hoople was so popular in his day that most people just called the strip after him. The strip was popular enough that a rival newspaper syndicate paid Ahern to create a comic strip called Room and Board with nearly identical characters, but with different names. Oddly, it wasn't as popular a…

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Here's another Nancy, this time about going to see Santa Claus at the mall. I can imagine a kid saying something like that, though, because he can't think of anything due to being excited or nervous to see Santa. As a kid, I was always too scared, even though my parents took me to the mall to see him. My memories consist entirely of looking at the line of people while standing outside the area and telling my mom I didn't want to. I don't even remember ever seeing the guy in the Santa suit from far away. I was a very shy child. I don't think I've changed much. Guys in Santa suits still make me nervous.