Comicon Advent Calendar 2023 Day 8: ‘Deck Us All With Boston Charlie’ – Walt Kelly’s Christmas

Another virtual door opens on the Comicon Advent 2023, our seasonal treat for you – 24 days of advent, 24 Christmas-themed comics for you.

Today, we’re back in the absolute classics of the medium, and Walt Kelly was a master of the medium.

Walt Kelly was best known, of course, for Pogo, but his career began at Disney as an animator where he would work on Pinocchio, Fantasia, The Reluctant Dragon, and Dumbo.

But it’s when he moved to Dell Comics in 1941, aged 28, that he became the masterful comic artist we know and love, with the creation of his masterpiece, Pogo.

The wonderful adventures of Pogo the possum, Albert the alligator, and all the gang in the Okefenokee Swamp ran from 1943 in Dell’s Animal Comics and from 1948 in newspaper strip form and have enchanted adults and children ever since.

Pogo was full of character, charm, laughter, and was always so clever, playing with language in a wonderful way. And of course, Kelly was never afraid to satirise the politics and political figures of the day, not to mention bringing an early environmentalist message into his work.

There were plenty of great Christmas moments in Pogo through the years, with just a selection below, but special mention has to go to ‘Deck Us All with Boston Charlie,‘ a wonderful, Carroll-like bit of nonsensical wordplay to the tune of Deck the Halls that became something a lot of people of an age in America will lovingly remember… It started in 1949 with Pogo and the gang singing Christmas carols, with the glorious swamp speak of the cast mashing up the lyrics to Deck the Halls magnificently to give us this…

 

It caught on and, over the many years of the strip, Kelly would revisit the song many times, in many different forms…

 

Now, a few more wonderful bits of Christmastime Walt Kelly and Pogo – starting with the fabulous one with the simple conceit of taking this famous line, ‘Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house. Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse’ and having one poor mouse get rather ticked off that there’s a pudding needs stirring and refuses to be the one not doing it…

Then this from Animal Comics, 1945

Pogo Sunday Brunch, 1955

Pogo Sunday Parade, 1954

 

 

And of course, Kelly wasn’t just about Pogo, and there’s so many great Kelly strips out there. But we’ll end with Christmas Comes To Woodland, first published in 1945 and included in Eclipse Comics’ 1987 Walt Kelly’s Christmas Comics, with a lovely Kelly-inspired cover by Steve Leialoha…