Merry Christmas!!!

….so random

Good morning from Toonstack!! I (Hilary!) am up early because SANTA CAME LAST NIGHT!!! I obviously couldn’t wait to wake you to find out which toys need batteries, which ones will take 5 hours of assembly by your drunk uncle and which one was actually wrapped for your sister and got the wrong tag on it.

Christmas, Noel, Navidad is a holiday filled with many random, random traditions. Putting toothbrushes in giant socks… random. Leaving cookies for a saint… random. Even Christmas itself… so random. Like how random is it that this random baby was born in some totally random manger and then for all of eternity people would put a tree in their house for 4 weeks in December? RANDOM! And then there’s all the random songs about nights being “silent” and and “decking halls” with “holly”… literally could you be more random? And then for SOME REASON in the 90s Harry Connick Jr. was like “I’m the king of Christmas” even though no one nominated him… random!

Here’s a bunch of totally random cartoons about Christmas, truly I don’t even know how they got here.

Jason Chatfield

All of the stories about Christmas I would read growing up were so alien to me: Snowy chimneys being visited by a big jolly fat man dressed in winter clothing, stories of kings following a star to bring random gifts to a stranger’s baby shower; it all seemed so bizarre. Not the least because I was sitting in 100 degree heat on a beach in Western Australia while reading all of these snowy tales. I think if the story was retold from an antipodean perspective, the 3 'wise men' would have switched out the myrrh for some beer and thrown a 'real' party to remember.
Happy holidays, everybody.

Carolita Johnson

Birth is already a messy business, but in a manger? Yech! (And because I don’t assume everyone is knowledgeable in the extreme lengths to which early Medieval Christian scholars and philosophers went to propose and prove that there was an Immaculate Conception, a good place to start, if you’re curious, is the writings of Albertus Magnus, AKA Albert the Great, who also had interesting cures for the common cold involving kissing donkeys on the nose). It’s not in the Bible. And yes, before I was a cartoonist, I was a Medieval Anthropology major and read Great Albert’s as well as the very serious really not kidding at all works of many of the other “Fathers of the Church.”

Johnny DiNapoli

The fish in this cartoon is singing the Bruce Springsteen version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, the best version, although the Jackson 5 version is good too. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays people!

Navied Mahdavian

Growing up, December meant one thing: presents. Well, presents for everyone else, except for me, that is. As the child of Iranian immigrants, my family didn’t celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah. I was just trying to make it on the hardknock streets of Miami without everyone rubbing my pronounced Iranian nose in their new Ninja Turtles, Tamagotchis, and Outlaw Laser Robo Geeks. 

Unrelatedly, here is a cartoon of Santa shooting Rudolph. 

Amy Kurzweil

One Winter weekend in the ‘90s, I walked to the local Walgreens with my friend, where we bought super cool smiley face candles, as you do. But because it was Christmas, the smiley face candles all had Santa hats on them. I brought my Santa smiley candle into my Jewish home and a parent of mine who will remain anonymous brought me back to the Walgreens so I could return the Christmas paraphernalia, as it was deemed unwanted. Call me a Scrooge, I have inherited this disdain for Christmas tchotchkes, Christmas music, and the general spirit of holiday gift buying. (The sad truth about Hanukkah is it’s a relatively minor holiday and all that talk about 8 nights of gifts is a little overdone – It’s more like eight nights of melted milk chocolate that tastes like tinfoil.) In any case, it’s a sacrifice, but during the entire month of December, I do not enter stores but instead do all my smiley face shopping exclusively on Amazon. 

Sofia Warren

It’s a trap, right? Do you get them a gift? Do you not get them a gift? Do you smile? Are you mad? Are they mad? This has happened to me before and it didn’t end well. I could have used this group.

Happy holidays! 

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ToonStack NewsStack

• Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!

• Join Kendra Allenby’s new online drawing class in January: the Lunchtime Sketchbook Hour

• Pre-Order Hilary’s new book ‘What Did I Do Today?’ and get free special sticky notes!

• Sofia Warren’s Radical: My Year with a Socialist Senator is out and available to order here. (And it was just named one of the best graphic novels of 2022 by Forbes!)

• Pre-order Ellis Rosen’s new book, Dink!: Pickleball Facts, Fictions, and Cartoons

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• See more cartoons from Ellis Rosen’s weekly Junk Drawer!