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Ever since it was first published, Robert Ripley's Believe It Or Not! has had an enormous amount of imitators and rip-offs. Some of them were commissioned by large syndicates (and some small syndicates, like the one Jack Kirby worked for), and others were created by staff cartoonists for their local newspapers. One such strip with a local flavor was Our Own Oddities, created by Ralph Graczak, which appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch starting in 1940 and ended in 1991. The oddities covered were most often related to St. Louis, but quite a few were from elsewhere in Missouri or other midwestern states. All of them were submitted by local readers. There was quite a bit of space given to local produce that looked like various people and animals, or was just abnormally large. Readers generally mailed this produce directly to the newspaper offices, I imagine so that they could verify the truthfulness of the claim (though stretching the truth never seemed to bother Ripley much).

Here we have a selection of Christmas oddities, the strangest of which is the man who had received decorated coconuts from an anonymous source for 18 years, and one of which doesn't seem like an oddity at all, but is just a dog dressed up in a Santa costume. Perhaps that was more odd in 1966 than it is now.

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Jiggs has found a clever way of disguising things he doesn't want his wife to know he's sneaking into the house. What he must realize, though, is that he better make sure to get her a good Christmas present, otherwise his ruse will be quickly discovered.

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Some ways of hiding presents work better than others. I was never able to find where my parents hid our Christmas presents when I was a kid. I think my dad probably hid them in plain sight, in a storage room among other boxes with boring stuff in them, so we never thought to look there. If you wait until the last minute to buy your presents, then you can avoid the whole issue. Of course, you can also do that if you wrap them immediately after buying them, but I'm too much of a procrastinator to do that.

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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 with.

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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 everyone will be happy. It's not exciting or surprising, but it's certainly less stressful, which I think is always a plus.

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 was a motorcycle enthusiast. Even when he put all his motorcycle gear on, he still just looked like Santa, but riding a motorcycle (which looks as cool as you think it would). If you wanted to disguise yourself you could try being less jolly, though I imagine that would be difficult given that anyone wanting to be a real beard Santa would have at least a certain amount of natural jolliness. You could also try slimming down. You might end up just looking like a member of ZZ Top, but who knows who ZZ Top is anymore?

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Following on from yesterday, just as Vi isn't very good at keeping a secret from Joe, Joe is equally bad at keeping a secret from Vi. I think it might have been better for Joe to meet this German (I guess) gentleman somewhere else outside of his home in order to be more discreet, but I guess he hasn't really thought that far.

I'm not entirely clear on why the salesman is German, or at least has some kind of German accent going on. Do the best pearls come from Germany? Or possibly the best knock-off ones?

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Here we have another Mr. and Mrs., and as we see Joe and Vi find it very difficult to hide things from one another. I chose this one mostly because of the first two panels. Comic strips can often be interesting cultural time capsules. It's strange to think that at one point owning a mahjong set was part of being "up to date." I wonder how many people in the United States would even know what a mahjong set was if they saw one.