Harper’s Weekly – January 4, 1873
Even though the tensions of Nast’s campaign against Horace Greeley campaign resulted in Nast’s physical collapse after President Ulysses Grant’s November 1872 victory, his depictions of Santa as a disciplinarian were over. His post-dated loving double-page cartoon showed four-year old Edith and seven-year old Tommy blissfully dreaming about more than a dozen of their favorite fairy tales, nursery rhymes and other stories like Gulliver, Robinson Crusoe and Ali Baba. Santa, with his sleigh and reindeer, was about to unload his overflowing pack. All of the fabled miniature characters were readily recognizable. Its level of detail and complexity mark The Same Old Christmas Story Over Again as one of the best non-political cartoons Nast ever drew for Harper’s Weekly. However, the title was apt because it reprised some of the same tales and format that he originated in Mother Goose Melodies for Harper’s Bazar two years before.