Cartoon: “I'm learning toymaking to bring in some extra money for the holidays.”

Holiday cartoons are kind of an oddity. There’s all kinds of material available (Santa, snowmen, elves, Scrooge, reindeer…) but you’re looking at probably a good 100 years or so of Christmas cartoons that you’re up against; just about everything has been done at least a few times.

So as a cartoonist you start looking further afield for jokes (four calling birds, advent calendars, throwing open the sash) which means you’re asking the reader to bring more to the cartoon than is necessarily reasonable.

It’s a balancing act that pretty much makes you bang your head on your drafting table. But every so often you get a good one and, if you’re like me, you shout “WOO!” and dance an elaborate jig.

This cartoon went from head banging to jig uncharacteristically fast, so I’m counting it as my Christmas miracle for the year. Happy holidays!

Check out more of Mark Anderson’s Mindflash cartoons:

• “The millennials are testing much better since we changed true/false to like/dislike.”
• “Bad news: The new guy got the VP training by mistake. Now he’s our boss.”

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Cartoonist Mark Anderson lives in the Chicago area with his wife, their children, two cats, a dog and several dust bunnies.Publications that use his cartoons include Reader’s Digest, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Forbes, Barrons, Woman’s World, Harvard Business Review, Saturday Evening Post, American Legion Magazine, Funny Times and many more.

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