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President Roosevelt describes the family’s “ideal” Christmas celebrations to his sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson. He asks Robinson to find out how her son, Monroe Douglas Robinson, could bear being seen with Roosevelt’s son, Ted Roosevelt, when Ted was wearing “such as cap as he seems to have carried.”
Library of Congress Manuscript Division
1906-12-26
People are gathered in a barn for a Christmas dance party. The fiddler arrives late, a bit intoxicated. Caption: Jabe Gormley–I got ‘im; I got ‘im; – but he’s been to two dances already!
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1895-12-04
A large Christmas tree is decorated with ornaments labeled with political offices and presidential appointments. Thomas Collier Platt and Matthew S. Quay, who is dressed as a woman, are standing in front of the tree. In queues on both sides are diminutive figures anxiously awaiting their presents, including from right to left, Jerry Simpson, Joseph B. Foraker, William E. Chandler, William McKinley, Whitelaw Reid, Thomas B. Reed, Levi P. Morton, Benjamin Harrison, William B. Allison, George F. Hoar, John Sherman, Chauncey M. Depew, and Robert T. Lincoln. Caption: The two big bosses have full charge of it, and the most obedient boys will come in for the best gifts.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1895-12-25
On the left is a street vendor selling Christmas greens. On the right is a poem by H. A. Crowell titled “Greens to Sell,” and an interior scene with a young man kissing a young woman beneath mistletoe hanging in a doorway.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1897-12-29
A beautiful young Native American woman stands beneath a sprig of mistletoe at a colonial Christmas party, while several men in attendance appear eager to kiss her.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1910-12-07
Illustration shows a woman holding cymbals as an ornament hanging from a Christmas tree.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1914-12-12
Two women help Puck hang Christmas decorations. They have used holly to form “Puck” at the top of the window.
During much of the immediately preceding years, Puck cartoons and editorials had grown more political than ever, and increasingly radical. Corporate investigations and scandals dominated 1905; a flurry of Muckraking exposes and Congressional actions filled 1906; and 1907 was capped by a Wall Street financial panic. The magazine in its showcase covers and center-spreads, did not abandon humor nor decorative and seasonal themes, but they were diminished in numbers and focus.
There is almost a palpable feeling of relief, therefore, to see Frank A. Nankivell’s holiday conceit for Puck‘s Christmas issue. Colorful, icon-filled, and as pretty smiles as Nankivell could muster on Gibson-Girl types, adorn the cover. Puck‘s Christmas issues, usually full color throughout and virtually bereft of politics, generally were three times the number of pages than regular issues.
Uncle Sam’s Christmas tree is about to topple over onto him because there are too many heavy ornaments near the top, including a red devil labeled “Politician,” a cannon labeled “Sherman Law,” a jack-in-the-box labeled “Wickersham,” a basket filled with food labeled “Cost of Living,” a parrot labeled “Woman Suffrage,” a ball labeled “Increased Taxes,” a large book labeled “Over-Legislation,” another ball with a “$” and the face of big business, an automobile labeled “Extravagance,” a large ball labeled “Bill” with the face of President Taft, and an angel labeled “Teddy.” Caption: Uncle Sam’s Christmas crash.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1911-12-20