Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings for the Human Race

9781465685124

213 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

This volume of Mr. Nast’s “Christmas Drawings” is the first collection of his works which has been published. The pictures are well called “Drawings for the Human Race,” because they appeal to the sympathy of no particular religious denomination or political party, but to the universal delight in the happiest of holidays, consecrated by the loftiest associations and endeared by the tenderest domestic traditions. Christmas is the holiday of all; but it is especially the Children’s day. The grotesque and airy fancies of childhood which cling about Santa Claus, as the good genius of Christmas, are reproduced upon these pages, in delightfully imaginative reality by the sympathetic touch of the artist, so that the book is an overflowing feast of true Christmas cheer. Mr. Nast’s hand, when dealing with current topics of the time, tips the flashing shafts of wit with morality; with relentless humor puts cunning pretence in the pillory; and exposes public wrong to the fatal merriment which laughs it away. But the artist’s hand is never happier than when, with the lambent light of the same humor, it irradiates the play of domestic affection, and makes the home circle gay. It is the bluff, honest Santa Claus of “The Night before Christmas;” the Santa Claus of the reindeer and the sleigh, alighting on the snowy roof, and descending the chimney with his wondrous pack of treasures; the Santa Claus of unsuspecting childhood, and the Mother Goose of undoubting infancy, to whom these pages introduce us. There is no child who cannot understand them, no parent who cannot enjoy them. Mr. Nast is fairly without a rival in this kind. His Santa Claus is old Father Christmas himself, and his welcome will be as general and as hearty as that which salutes the crammed and enchanted stocking on Christmas morning.