The Flapandhonk that stole Christmas....

I've noticed something slightly appalling about how Christmas is depicted in the New-Ruin era; instead of being anything like the Holidays that the real Pattersons had where the chaos, clean-up and commercialism was the price they willingly paid for the magic, the current spirit is the one we saw on 9 December 2009. As you will recall, the second panel had Elly wrapping a present with a pained, martyred expression on her face as if buying gifts for her children was some sort of cruel and inhuman imposition inflicted by a medieval tyrant who wanted to deny her help, time to herself, the right to express herself, et cetera ad infinitum. This is, of course, because the Elly of the current strips is a worse person than the real one; the person that used to exist hid the presents because she didn't want her children to spoil the surprise and lessen the general delight. The one we have now is an anhedonic mess who regards the whole thing as an excuse to add more work to her bleak, wind-blown exile from the real world as she thanklessly toils away for a cloddish, knuckle-dragging tyrant husband and greedy children. If this seems sort of horrible, consider that Lynn sees something far different when she looks at what we see as a grim and no-holds-barred look at a bad family having a joyless Christmas; in the strip in her mind, the Pattersons are about to have a great Christmas and be content. It's sort of too bad that she seems to not be able to communicate that to her readers but it's par for the course. We do, after all, have to remember that she didn't show Liz being homesick in Mtigwaki or Michael being a good father to his kids either 'cause she forgot that we can't see inside her head.