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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.

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I like this one because it works on several levels. First of all, it's of course humorous to think that Santa and Mrs. Claus have a son, and a lazy one at that. Second of all, it's great that Berry takes the much maligned cliche of the fat, lazy, bearded hippy and turns it into a major qualification for the important job of actually being Santa. I wonder what "Take Your Child To Work Day" looks like there.

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Contrary to the credit on the comic strip, this version of Yogi was not actually created by Hanna or Barbera. This kind of thing often happens with derivative features such as this. In the case of Yogi, Gene Hazelton was the original creator on the strip, and many other ghost artists contributed to it over the years.

The implication in this strip is that Yogi and Santa Claus have some kind of relationship, and a close enough one that Santa would think to call Yogi to bail him out of jail. I'm interested to find out how this relationship began, and whether or not it's persisted in the Hanna-Barberaverse or not. Of course, more interesting than the fact that Yogi personally knows Santa is that the desk sergeant apparently doesn't even recognize Santa at all. This suggests that Christmas isn't a very widely celebrated holiday in the H-BU, and also that the reason why you may not get any presents in this world isn't because you've been bad, but because Santa's been detained.

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Today is the generally accepted date of Beethoven's birthday, given that we have record of him being baptized on the 17 of December. Of course December is when we celebrate the birthday of Jesus, but I think it's always good to spare a thought for all the other people that were born this month. It must be difficult having your birthday overshadowed by one of the most famous people ever, and one of the most widely celebrated holidays ever.

Also, feel free to celebrate along with Schroeder by listening to the Beethoven sonata he mentioned.

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Berry's World was a single panel gag strip that ran for a fairly long time, from 1962 to 2003. It was a single panel on weekdays, at least. On Sundays, as you can see here, it had multiple panels. Jim Berry, the cartoonist, tried to keep it as topical as he could. While he wasn't an editorial cartoonist, he seemed to have the same sensibilities as one. He was the president of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists for a time, so they at least considered him one of their own. The strip was never one of the main stars of the comic page, but it always boasted a large newspaper client list, and is fondly remembered by many. Berry could probably have kept the strip going for as long as he wanted, but he decided to end it in 2003 and retire.

The conceit here seems absurd, but at the same time seems like it couldn't be too far from reality. I mean, there has to be some kind of quality control for mall Santas, right? I imagine it's a bit more clandestine than this, though. They probably have some "secret shopper" types that bring their kids in and report the whole experience back to management, so the Santas are always on their toes. Either that, or there's some fine print on one of the signs that says "This may be monitored or recorded for training purposes."

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I'm posting this one not because I find it particularly funny, but because I find the existence of the strip interesting. It was based on the hugely popular TV show Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in, which started in 1967. The strip started only a year afterwards in 1968, and ended in 1972, a year before the show did. The show was very Vaudevillian, with a lot of quick-fire gags and jokes, and a number of different sketches. The strip clearly tries to emulate that style, by packing a number of characters into each strip and having them each do their own joke.The art style is very fluid and dynamic, and certainly fits the feel of the show, and of the era. It doesn't seem to succeed at being funny, though, because the popularity of the show seemed to come from the audience's enjoyment of the delivery of the jokes and not necessarily the jokes themselves. The cartoonist, Roy Doty, was also told he was not allowed to use the likenesses of any of the cast members from the show, for whatever reason. This really meant that the strip was relying on the show's name recognition alone. It really is a wonder it lasted as long as it did.

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While the character of Brother Juniper was named after a historical figure, the St. Bernard shown here was not actually named after a Catholic saint. It was named after a hospice in Switzerland, where they were first bred to rescue people. The hospice itself was named after St. Bernard of Menthon (not the more famous Bernard of Clairvaux). In doing a little research on the dog breed, I was unfortunately unable to find anything about their ability to sing or harmonize with bells. I did find that the most recently the dog was used for rescues was 1955, years before this comic was published. This means that the dog pictured here is not a rescuer, and it's possible he is actually employed mainly as a singer. The barrel, therefore, must be where he keeps his sheet music.

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Brother Juniper is a unique comic strip with a unique origin, and I don't say that lightly. The creator of the strip, Fred McCarthy, became a Franciscan friar in 1944. He had been drawing cartoons from a young age, and continued doing so while attending St. Bonaventure College in New York. He would often draw a short, stout friar that he originally called "Friar Sad Sack" for posters and signs around campus, though he eventually would name him "Brother Juniper." He was named after one of the first followers of St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscan order. Juniper was known among the Franciscans as the "renowned jester of the Lord," and of whom many humorous stories are told, so it seemed to fit as the name of a cartoon friar. At first Brother Juniper only appeared in the national Franciscan magazine Friar, but in 1958 it was picked up by Publishers Syndicate and nationally syndicated. It ran for an impressive 31 years, until it ended in 1989.

This is fascinating to me as someone who isn't Catholic and who, frankly, didn't even realize until writing this post that the Franciscan order still exists. It's also interesting that a sincere comic strip about the order was so well received, and for so long, across the country and even internationally. I also appreciate that the gags are actually clever and funny. I've seen some other overtly religious comics before, and even as a religious person I found them to be quite stale and uninteresting. You would expect a comic about an order of friars to be so, too, but somehow McCarthy was able to make it fun and interesting, and enjoyable to look at.

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For more on Gordo, see my post on it from last year. Here's another absolutely beautiful Sunday strip from Gus Arriola. It's kind of gross when you really think about it, but it looks so nice that I choose not to.

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Part of the magic of Santa Claus is that he sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake, so it stands to reason that he should already know what you want for Christmas without you having to write him. Therefore, even if Elsworth can't read his own handwriting, Santa should be able to just read his mind and know what he meant to write.

Also, given that the top row of panels again appears to be unrelated to the bottom row of panels, I wonder if these Sunday strips are just two dailies smashed together. Thankfully, unlike the last one, the top row makes sense even if something has been removed (or whatever happened with that other one).