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The Toodles was a domestic, family comic strip written by husband and wife team Stanley and Betsy Baer, and drawn by Rod Ruth. Betsy was the daughter of cartoonist Sol Hess, known for creating the comic strip The Nebbs. Betsy and her husband disagreed with Sol about the way he did things in his strip, and so to prove a point, they started a comic strip of their own. It started in 1941 and ran until 1961. Unfortunately, Sol Hess died the very month that the strip debuted, so they were unable to truly prove him wrong. The Bell Syndicate, who published The Nebbs, certainly took notice, though, and hired them on to continue writing the strip after Hess's death. Since they were writing two comic strips at once, they couldn't resist the temptation to have them cross over, and the Nebbs and the Toodles began visiting each other from time to time. Even when The Nebbs ended and The Toodles was still running, the Nebb family would still show up to visit the Toodle family occasionally.
Here we see the youngest members of the Toodle family, the twins Penny and Pat, who were probably the most popular characters in the strip. The way they imagine Santa Claus is very interesting. I don't think I've seen very many fantasies where Santa looks stressed and overworked. He has all those elves to help him, after all. He's also magical, which I imagine would make it easier to do at least some of the tasks that he has to do. Still, Pat's theory about Santa's beard could be correct. It seems Santa's elves are often depicted with beards, too, so they probably don't have a lot of time to shave either. Perhaps instead of leaving milk and cookies for Santa this year, leave him a razor.