’Tis the season to be jolly—or not! New Yorker holiday covers have showcased a wide range of emotions over the years. In Edward Sorel’s cover from 2012, for instance, Santa’s reindeer crankily side-eye their boss for interrupting their poker game. Istvan Banyai’s drawing of McSorley’s Old Ale House, in the Village, from 2013, is moody and perhaps even a little lonesome. The pressure and excitement of gift-giving is rendered vividly in a cover by Franco Matticchio, from 1999, in which Santa is hoisted into the air by an outsized sack of presents. And in a cover from 1939, Perry Barlow illustrates a small child’s shocked confusion as his mother kisses Santa Claus.
One gets a little wistful, looking through more than ninety years of images and observing that some holiday traditions are on the wane. Nowadays there seem to be fewer cards on the mantel than depicted in a cover by Beatrice Szanton, in 1960. Shoppers are more likely to shop online now than at a department store, as depicted in a 1934 cover by Richard Decker. And it’s rare to find carollers at your door, like the ones featured on a cover from 1960 by Peter Arno. Some things do persist: covers from the nineteen-sixties by Arthur Getz and Charles Martin, for example, show large pines strapped to truck beds, on their way from forests, to be sold on the streets of the city. So it’s hard not to feel at least a little heartened looking at a recent cover by Tom Gauld, which depicts the lengths that citygoers still go to continue that tradition: schlepping trees home on a crowded subway car to celebrate the holiday with loved ones.
