If you or your kids were fans of the tv show, The OC, you know about Christmakkah. It’s what you celebrate when one parent is Jewish and the other is of a different faith. My wife, kids, grandkids and I all celebrated Christmakkah yesterday. As I see it the kids get a pretty good deal with this arrangement. They get all the presents under the tree Christmas morning and then get a gift every night for the next 8 nights. Christmas started when the day started, but Hanukkah didn’t kick in until sundown. The fact that sundown kicked in around 4:30 pm did not allow Christmas the full day to bask in the sunlight, so on behalf of my people, I offer my sincerest apologies. Not only did Christmas and Hanukkah have to fight it out for the spotlight, so did the NBA. For years Christmas tv belonged solely to basketball. 5 straight games starting at 12:30 pm, all the way through the nightcap which started on the West Coast at 10:30 pm EST. But this year, football and the ubiquitous NFL decided they wanted to share the spotlight and ran two games on Netflix. Not fair. Well the grandkids solved that by starting to cry when I tried to switch from Clifford, the Big Red Dog, to basketball and well, the hell with it. I watched it on delay when we got back home. That said, our first comic has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with holiday travel, and, miracle of miracles, there was no traffic coming into or out of Brooklyn.

Our second comic deals with holiday cards. I don’t believe in them, especially the ones that brag about all the wonderful things they and their brilliant offspring accomplished in the past year. It’s worse when you don’t even know the people. My wife worked in an industry where she knew people from all over the country and they send each other cards every year. I have no idea who many of these people are—little Freddie learned how to swim, Ashley graduated MIT Summa Cum Laude, Johnny is studying the bar, and Sara just started her internship at Goldman Sachs but sadly, our beloved dog Fido passed away. How wonderful for them (except for Fido). Just don’t hog up so much space on my refrigerator. John on the other hand illustrates his own card. If you are a fan of The New 60 or of John or both, you’ll instantly recognize his style. They say opposites attract and this is true of your two humble cartoonists, at least when it comes to cards. One of us rolls his eyes while the other rolls up his sleeves.

Happy holidays and we’ll serve you up our last two comics of 2024 next Friday.

Andy and John