Last week, I sent out my usual batch of Christmas cards with the sweet little expressions of joy and cheer. This year, I chose cards with Merry Christmas and Happy New Year on the front and blank inside, where I wrote a message offering hope that everyone’s dreams would be fulfilled in a fresh new year.
My cards in the past had wished my family and friends “a wonderful holiday season” or “a Beautiful Holiday Season and a New Year of Peace and Happiness” and “the hope – the joy and wonder of Christmas.”
Such lovely cards, such endearing sentiments straight from the heart.
But suppose we sent cards that were from a place so far away from the heart that you had to dig way deep to get to it. That seemed to be the thinking in a humorous take on Christmas card messages that Look magazine offered in its Dec. 25, 1945, issue. The tongue-in-cheek cards were created by cartoonist Ralph Stein under this headline:
“If Christmas cards told the truth …”
Stein was an illustrator/cartoonist who was described as a humor or gag cartoonist. He was certainly running a gag with the Look magazine Christmas cards. As a sergeant in the Army during World War II, he was cartoon editor of Yank, the Army’s weekly magazine. Interestingly, I came across some copies of Yank a couple years ago at auction.
He also co-wrote a comical book “It’s a Cinch, Private Finch!” in 1943, based on life in the military. A year later, he compiled and produced cartoons from Yank in a book called “What Am I Laughing At?”
After the war, Stein was a writer and cartoonist for the Popeye comic strip for five years, and he also did illustrations for King Features.
Stein took a strong liking to cars, developing that passion into an avocation that made him a go-to expert and led to 10 books. He also wrote books about the Army, inventions and pin-ups (Yank had its pin-ups, many of them movie stars). He was one of a number of cartoonists who used their pens to depict the war. Earlier this year, he was among those featured in a National Constitution Center exhibit in Philadelphia titled “Art of the American Soldier,” covering the last 100 years. Stein died in 1994 at age 85.
Here are the messages in the faux Christmas cards in Look magazine:
“Merry Christmas Again
Though sending this
Costs just a few cents
It constitutes
An annual nuisance.”
- Cartoonist Ralph Stein’s Christmas-card cartoons for Look magazine, 1945.
“Our List Just Seems to Grow and Grow
Dime store special
Buck-a-dozen
Noel to you
My distant cousin.”
“A Friendly Reminder
Greetings early
Greetings pleasant
(We’ll expect
the usual present).”
“This little goon’s
our pride and joy
Gweetings from
our slack-jawed boy.
– from the Smyths”
“Lost weekend.
Three days late
We wish you merry
Daddy’s goofed
on Tom-and-Jerry.
P.S. Some years we just don’t send any.”
To you, Ralph Stein, wherever you are:
I know your cards were just a joke
For you are one who loves to poke
Christmas is the time for an open heart
Even if it sometimes needs a little spark.
Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. To All.
