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The older I get, the more I appreciate the kind of practical presents that were originally on Baby's list. Sure, as a kid I would have loved to get a toy, but I probably wouldn't play with it for very long before forgetting about it. Something I can actually use and do something with, and continue to use regularly, is much more valuable to me now. That said, I'm sure that all of Baby's friends and family will be delighted by whatever they receive and appreciate the gesture.

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What do you get the man who has everything and has forgotten everything he has? Something he already has, of course!

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George Lichtenstein, better known as Lichty, created the comic strip Grin and Bear It in 1932, and he worked on it until his retirement in 1974. It was picked up by Ralph Dunagin and Lichty's assistant Rick Yager, and later Fred Wagner, and ran all the way up to 2015. Quite an impressive run for a single panel gag strip.

This strip in particular highlights one of the perils of children's plays, especially Christmas plays. Children are already excitable, nervous, and probably shy when it comes to performing, and their normal response seems to involve just ignoring what's going on and making their own fun out of it (at least that's what I remember doing when I was that age). Adding in the excitement of the Christmas season probably doesn't help matters either. In this case, I think probably making only one of them the angel and having the rest of them be shepherds or something might have been a better idea. That way they would at least have some fake sheep to play w…

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Can You Beat It? was a comic panel that originally appeared in the New York World in 1906, and was eventually syndicated to several papers across the nation. Only scant information is available about it or its creator. The artist signed his name as Maurice Kennet, but apparently was an Italian immigrant named Prosper Fiorini. According to the only source I could find on him, he studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, before deciding to move to the United States to draw cartoons for Joseph Pulitzer. Not the path I would have taken were I in his shoes, but I guess it paid well.

The joke here is that sometimes you can never really know what someone might like for a gift unless you ask them, which is hardly a joke if you ask me. I realize some people feel it's more thoughtful to intuit what someone else might like yourself instead of just asking them, but in my experience that always ends in disappointment. Just ask them what they want, and get it for them, and…

Fontaine Fox, creator of Toonerville Folks, is a favorite of mine, partly because we share the same birthday (though he was born a hundred years before me), and partly because of his charming and unique art style. Toonerville Folks didn't always run under that name, as we see in this particular case. It often ran as either a one-off title related to the panel of the day, or under one of several other titles that got reused now and again. No matter the title, however, Fox's distinctive style would always be a clear indication of what it was. It's simple, but very expressive, and allowed him to often fit far more characters into a scene than you might see in other comic strips.

Today's strip hightlights the plight of those who play Santa during the Christmas season. I have known a "real beard Santa" before, and I wonder what it must be like to have to maintain the beard all year, looking like Santa at all times, and probably have every kid you come across do a double take when they see you. The one I knew w…