Santa and His Flying Machines: Tigwissel Tuesdays #45
For our second week in the March of Progress in Santa Science, we have more excerpts from my (unpublished) project collecting Victorian Age through WW I Christmas cartoons & comics. In more modern times, (particularly during the Space Race / Apollo Program), one can find such cartoons as Santa straddling space rockets, or, of him drag racing NASA astronauts around the Earth or the Moon!
Regarding why Santa is seeking to upgrade his seemingly “green” Faster-than-Light / Time-Space-warping reindeer, one need only recall the carbon hoofprints of shipping hundreds of tons of reindeer food to the middle of the barren North — nevermind positioning thousands of C4 cargo planes with said reindeer food, mid-air on Christmas Eve, for their fly-through non-stop “refueling”. (Chronowave surfing to visit billions of locations in Earth-Time one hour, is not done on one meal!)
Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.
Above & beneath, two color cartoons from Christmas 1910 issues of Judge magazine, as found in a copy of Judge’s random remainders collection, Caricature: The Wit & Humor of a Nation. The below Santa cartoon references that year’s passage of Halley’s Comet near Earth.
Above, Santa depicted as mystical flying machine pilot, from the front cover of the December 21st, 1895 edition of Town Talk. More down to Earth below, we have Santa, his flying contraption, and the presents he was carrying, after their encounter with a church steeple. From Life magazine, December 5th, 1912, by Harrison Cady.
Above, another bit of filler art from Judge magazine, 1910.
And finally, the full panorama of Santa-Science-To-Date (that date being December 20th, 1896). Art by Bodfish, from the centerspread of the New York weekly Twinkles.
Christmas Comics JudgeMag NYLife NYTwinkles
— Doug
