Holidays

Christmas compliments from Ambassador Richard C. Kerens.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-25

Calling card of Matthew C. Gleeson with holiday wishes to Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Kermit Carow Roosevelt.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-25

A religious Christmas message is printed on a postcard with the illustration of two robed people singing from a hymnal in church. Martha Waller Johnson refers to herself by her nickname, Aunt Jobiska, and includes a message in shorthand.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12-25

California Governor Hiram Johnson and his wife Minnie Johnson wish Theodore Roosevelt a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1911-12

This item notes that the day of its publication is Navy Day, which commemorates Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday. A portrait of Theodore Roosevelt and pictures of the USS Arizona and sailors on the USS California are included.

Collection

Dickinson State University

Creation Date

Unknown

Theodore Roosevelt sends New Year’s greetings to Secretary of the Navy Meyer and his wife Marian Alice Appleton Meyer. Roosevelt recently discussed Meyer’s physical test work with Cameron McRae Winslow. Roosevelt believes William Sowden Sims has done more for the marksmanship of the Navy than anyone else, regardless of his indiscretions.

Collection

Massachusetts Historical Society

Creation Date

1910-12-30

Theodore Roosevelt has had an extraordinary campaign and continues to recover after being shot. He encourages Robert Harry Munro Ferguson to go on vacation with his wife, Isabella Ferguson.

Collection

Arizona Historical Society

Creation Date

1912-10-29

Uncle Sam, looking a bit startled, sits in a chair, holding a page from a calendar with “February 22” printed in red, for George Washington’s birthday. Theodore Roosevelt stands next to him with a paint brush full of red paint which he has used to change the color of his birthday, “October 27,” on the calendar, suggesting that he, too, might be considered the “Father of His Country.” A silhouette portrait of George Washington hangs on the wall next to the calendar. Caption: A question of dates.

Comments and Context

The subject of L. M. Glackens’s cartoon is Washington’s Birthday — the issue of Puck celebrates it — but the object of the cartoon is to ridicule Theodore Roosevelt. The outgoing president, who would retire in less than three weeks, is dressed in his old Rough Rider uniform and has rudely painted his own birthday on the calendar. It was an ad hominem attack upon Roosevelt; a comment on his supposed ego.

If Puck had wanted to hew closer to current events — but with less opportunity for invective — it could have noted that 1909 was the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. In one of his last official acts as president, Roosevelt traveled to Hardin, Kentucky, and participated in ceremonies at Lincoln’s birthplace, also in February.

Two older men, a former Confederate soldier and a former Union soldier, walk arm in arm to purchase tickets for a double-header baseball game. A young boy in the foreground tips his hat, and in the background, a line is forming at the ticket booth and the grandstand is already crowded. Caption: One national flag. One national game.

Collection

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs

Creation Date

1913-05-28

Theodore Roosevelt thanks Anna Roosevelt Cowles for her Christmas gift of a bowl.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1912-12-26

Theodore Roosevelt speaks in commemoration of Decoration Day in Nassau County, New York.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

Unknown

President Roosevelt gives an address in commemoration of the Thanksgiving holiday, and calls for appreciation of national and individual liberties.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1906-10-22

Theodore Roosevelt writes to his sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles about his health, Christmas Day activities, and grandchildren.

Collection

Harvard College Library

Creation Date

1918-12-28

The children’s Christmas book titled A Visit from Saint Nicholas tells the story of Saint Nicholas, or Santa Claus, and his visit to a family’s home on the night before Christmas. The story would later be known as The Night Before Christmas.

Collection

Sagamore Hill National Historic Site

Creation Date

1862

Assistant Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee requests President Roosevelt’s approval of New Year messages to Emperor Nicholas II of Russia and President Porfirio Díaz of Mexico. It is noted by George B. Cortelyou that President Roosevelt approves and Adee has been informed by telephone.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1902-01

New Year’s letters featuring greetings and wishes from Andrew Carnegie, Secretary of the Navy John Davis Long, and the “Father of Greater New York,” likely referring to A. H. Green.

Collection

Library of Congress Manuscript Division

Creation Date

1901-12-31

A large crowd of people rush forward to the “Exchange Desk,” bearing Christmas gifts which they wish to exchange.

Comments and Context

“Many unhappy returns.” The subtext of L. M. Glackens’ post-Christmas cover cartoon in Puck is how America had changed in, say, one short decade. Ten years prior, America was trying to crawl out from a devastating depression punctuated by labor strikes and strife, and from a turbulent presidential election enlivened by fears of radicalism and a Populist movement.

By 1906, after a war and a presidential assassination, the United States found equilibrium, and enjoyed an unprecedented prosperity under President Roosevelt. It was a time of record immigration, but a simultaneous shift of urbanites to suburbs; and new industries generally absorbed the new workforce.

Illustration shows rows of toys, dolls, teddy bears, soldiers and drummers, and trees.

Comments and Context

The annual Christmas issue of Puck in 1906 was given to Frank A. Nankivell for its cover design. In recent years the holiday issues of the magazine were given to decorative or poster-like images. It made the special themes more widely attractive to readers and advertisers, especially downplaying politics and partisanship. These issues usually were more pages — often 32 or 48 pages instead of Puck‘s usual 16 — and carried more color cartoons and advertising.

Nankivell was born in Australia, where he drew cartoons for various publications before he moved to Japan, where he drew for the Tokio Puck (no relation to Joseph Keppler’s New York Puck), then drawing for newspapers and magazines in San Francisco and finally Puck in New York.

In the interior of a frontier cabin, a long table is set for a Christmas turkey dinner. Around the table are seated several people, some of whom are surprised to discover an arrow stuck in the turkey, shot by a Native standing outside the open door of the cabin.

Comments and Context

In Puck Magazine’s holiday issues — Easter, Midsummer, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Christmas — the publishers generally yielded space routinely reserved for political cartoons to thematic, seasonal, or purely humorous subjects.

The 1906 Christmas number was no exception, and Puck‘s Austrian import Carl Hassmann was counted on to provide superb-poster like artwork in addition to clever ideas. This center-spread cartoon, in fact, is not very clever or funny — a Native American startles Colonial revelers at dinner with an arrow aimed at the holiday turkey — but does tell us something about the times of the cartoon’s creation. The Pilgrims are rather more up-to-date than their 1600s versions, especially the women, and the Indian is not depicted as a savage but rather a friendly prankster.

Santa Claus, labeled “G.O.P.,” reaches to place the “Star of Hope” on top of a Christmas tree trimmed with lemons, marble hearts, a stuffed bear “From Teddy,” two “Little Big Sticks” and a “Big Stick,” a ball of “Promises,” and three balls labeled “Gas, Guff, [and] Wind.” On a nearby table is Joseph Cannon as a “Joe in the Box,” a “Home made frosted cake from Uncle Joe’s Pantry,” and a book of “Fairy Tales by Uncle Sam.”

Comments and Context

J. S. Pughe’s cover cartoon directly addresses a crisis in America’s handling of the Philippine Islands as an American territory, during an important moment of policymaking. The matters at hand were important to the Filipinos, of course: trade, tariffs, and economic sovereignty.

To the American public, especially since most of the bloody insurrection was quelled — largely by President Roosevelt’s amnesty and promises of self-determination — questions concerning the Philippines had become a matter of great indifference. Governor-General William H. Taft, returning to the United States and engaging in policy speeches, remarked that the sure way to clear a hall of reporters and attentive listeners was to mention the Philippines.