Fetivus for the Rest of Us. 12/26/25

By the time you read this, it’ll be the day after Christmas. But I’m writing it on Christmas Day. What? Christmas? How could I? It’s easy. I’m Jewish. Christmas Day for a Jew is 1) go to a movie, followed by 2) go out for Chinese. Now, not every Jew is the same. My daughter, for instance wants a tree, ornaments, the whole nine yards. And she celebrates Hanukkah as well. Ever since she was able to speak she kept wanting a Christmas tree. And we kept telling her, honey, we don’t celebrate Christmas, we’re Jewish. Until one year, when she was 4 or 5 years old, she was in her car seat and defiantly crossed her arms and said, “Fine, when I grow up I’m gonna marry someone Christmas!” And so she did, and they are very happy celebrating both.

To my wife, Christmas used to mean watching one of three Christmas movies, a different one each year, with her daddy. You know the three: Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas. She wanted to continue the tradition with me. I love Miracle and Wonderful Life but for some reason, I kept avoiding White Christmas. I mean, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye singing and dancing for Army troops? No thanks. I finally broke down and watched it last year. And I must admit, I liked it and even teared up a little at the end. Okay, more than a little. In fact, I was so engaged, I looked up some fun facts about the movie. To those of you who have never seen it, it revolves around these soldiers who hear that their old pal, the General, has retired and bought a hotel in Vermont, but was struggling because it hadn’t snowed. They put on a big show to help him out and at the end, miracle of miracles, it snows! They all go outside and look up as the snow falls on their faces, their hands and on their tongues. I asked Chat GPT how the producers made it snow, thinking they used a snow machine like they do on ski slopes. But this was 1954 and that technology didn’t exist. So, you know what they used instead? Asbestos. That’s right, and they stuck their tongues out to catch the “snow” in their mouths. I think the end is worth watching, just for that.

So, to sum up, Christmas means different things to different people. For John, it’s a houseful of family, and grandchildren running downstairs to open their presents (although at an early age, the kids like the boxes and ribbons much better than the actual gifts inside the boxes.) I remember a couple years ago, my daughter and son-in-law turned a big box upside down, cut a crescent-shaped hole in it so their two-year-old could crawl into her “fort’” and that beat every other present by far. For me, we’re going with friends to see Song Sung Blue with Hugh Jackman playing a Neil Diamond impersonator (embarrassing fact: I freaking love Neil Diamond), followed by an early dinner at Szechuan Village, followed by one of the three classics back at home.

Since this is the 52nd and last blog of the year, we wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our loyal readers for continuing to engage every week with The New 60 Comic. That’s the best present of all,

Andy and John

On Gender Reassignment and Halloween

Sometimes the subjects of these blogs fit into a neat little headline. Like last week’s for instance. One comic was about filling your car up at gas stations and another about trains, so the title “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” came naturally (even though there wasn’t anything about planes). But, sometimes the two comics have absolutely nothing in common and so I am forced to go with the more prosaic, “On Gender Reassignment and Halloween.” If you readers have any suggestions for a more pithy title, send them in.

Let’s start with Halloween, even though the comic is only remotely about Halloween. I live in Tarrytown, NY, and right across the street is North Tarrytown, which has been renamed Sleepy Hollow. If there was ever a place that went absolutely nuts for Halloween, this is it. Washington Irving, who wrote the Legend of Sleepy Hollow (the one with the headless horseman) has the next town over named for him, Irvington. They have haunted hayrides with high school students dressed up as ghosts and witches who pop out from behind trees and scare the bejesus out of the little kids on the hayride. I have a couple questions here. 1) why is that considered fun and 2) what does bejesus mean? Anyway, suffice it to say that this corner of Westchester County takes its Halloween seriously. Having said that, my wife and I moved to an apartment building 6 years ago with mostly empty nesters so there’s almost no trick or treating involved, and no need to dress up like a haunted figure to answer the door, because no kids are showing up in the first place. But this comic was really about crass commercialism. There are stores (remember stores, they were those buildings with signs in front before Amazon took over?) that cater to one holiday season at a time. There are Christmas stores, Summer stores (patio furniture and beach chairs, etc.) and Halloween stores. But the funny thing is these places run out of costumes or Christmas trees or decorations or deck chairs long before the season they are meant to serve. I mean, who even thinks about Halloween decorations in September? Apparently a lot of people, because when (if you are like us) you finally get around to shopping for Halloween, everything is gone and the store is loaded with Christmas decorations. In October! John and I had a discussion about the clerk at the store, whether he should say we ran out of Halloween stuff after Labor Day or should we say after Columbus Day. Columbus Day won because it was more believable.

Then there was the comic we called Gender Bender. Now everytime we broach a controversial subject we tread carefully, not wanting to offend anybody. But let’s face it, that’s pretty damn impossible. When we were putting this one together, we focused not on the gender reassignment surgery, but rather on Marv’s uncomfortable reaction to it. Our guess is that would be pretty typical amongst people in our particular age group. But who are we to judge? In this case, it turned on the lie everybody says when they run into someone they haven’t seen in many decades…”You haven’t changed a bit.” Doesn’t matter if they put on an extra 100 pounds, had hair plugs, silicone boobs, lap-band surgery or even if they changed sexes, we all say the same thing. But face it, everybody changes. Except for John and me who still have all our hair, which miraculously hasn’t turned grey, all our height and all our physical strength. We haven’t changed a bit. Except for, well…everything.

That’s all folks for this week. Have a great weekend and we will see you next week with two new ones.

Andy and John

Happy Holidays 12/25/2020

Happy Holidays. And good riddance to 2020, though we’re supposed to save that sentiment for next week’s blog. Anyhow, with holiday season upon us we did a holiday themed two pack of comics. Now I celebrate Hanukkah and John is a Christmas guy, so we settled on this idea which gave a shout out to the both of us. But what about Festivus, you ask? Good question. Did you know, that was actually a thing before Seinfeld? No kidding. It seems that one Mr. Daniel O’Keefe of Readers Digest made it up in the ‘60’s, because he was tired of family squabbles around the holidays. He even called for sitting around the table for the Airing of Grievances. I kid you not. And get this, his son Dan became a writer for Seinfeld and wrote the Festivus episode which made the made up holiday famous. For those of you keeping count, the official date is December, 23rd, the date the elder O’Keefe had his first date with his future wife. But I digress. The storing and retrieving of ornaments is apparently such a struggle, it’s almost not worth it. I wouldn’t know. I’m a Jew. But my daughter, who for years, yearned for a tree, showed us and eventually married a Methodist and has that damned tree every year!

As for the holiday card, well that sprung from the mind of John. It’s tough to kiss from 6-feet apart, and by the way, that’s a hell of a lot of mistletoe.

So whether you have your holidays on zoom or together wearing masks, stay safe and we will see you next week with a new comic and a New Year’s poster wishing 2020 a not very fond farewell.

And if this blog seems a bit short, well, cartoonists get some time off too.

See you next week,

Andy and John