Caroling

In a dining room, a man sits at a table eating, a woman has opened a door, and three men stand in the doorway, singing Christmas carols.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Puck‘s Louis M Glackens, increasingly its assigned cartoonist specializing in holiday covers and poster-like illustrations, manages a little subtle humor in this otherwise ubiquitous festive scene. The Christmas carolers are thin and at least one of them casts a hungry eye on the Christmas dinner. In the warm house, a portly man sits by a glowing fireplace about to dine, alone, and the setting sun in the background indicates that dinner time approaches… perhaps not for the carolers.

On a winter’s night a small figure labeled “Consumer” sings a Christmas carol at the bottom of the steps to a large federal building. Standing on the steps, a large, bloated man labeled “Special Privilege,” along with Joseph Gurney Cannon, J. S. Sherman, and others, present a formidable barrier to the sad and complaint-filled tidings of the meek caroler. The carol begins, “Confound you, merry gentlemen! Will nothing you dismay? Won’t you revise the tariff until the Judgment Day?”

comments and context

Comments and Context

“Waits” were part of an ancient profession once common in medieval and Renaissance Europe and England. Evolving from street musicians to salaried ensembles of pipers and singers, waits roamed the streets to provide entertainment, warnings and announcements, greetings, and ceremonial music at events. In Germany the waits were called stadtpfeifers (town pipers) and sometimes were installed in towers throughout towns, providing what later generations would know as background music during daily activities.

A group of office seekers labeled “McLean, Pulitzer, Dorsheimer, Blackburn, McLaughlin, Hill, [and] Dana” sing Christmas carols outside the “White House” where President Cleveland is visible through a window. Their carol goes: “God rest you, merry gentlemen, / May nothing you dismay; / Remember us poor spoilsmen left / This blessed Christmas Day. / Since Christmas comes but once a year, / Oh, let us share your Christmas cheer, / And chuck one little office here / On Christmas Day in the A. M.”

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1885-12-23

Theodore Roosevelt stands at an open window, greeting a group of men singing Christmas carols. The carolers are John D. Rockefeller, Joseph Benson Foraker, Henry H. Rogers, Edward Henry Harriman, David J. Brewer, and James Roscoe Day.

comments and context

Comments and Context

Cartoonist L. M. Glacken’s Christmas Day cover drawing in Puck featured a frequent theme of the day — a frequent practice, now largely moribund, of carolers singing hymns and Christmas songs house to house. The “Outs,” they sometimes were called, especially when not invited indoors for warmth and refreshments.