Did Sunday’s strip ring a few recognition bells in long time Crankshaft readers?
Well, it should have.
The Crankshaft/Murdoch family has flip flopped on real vs artificial trees a few times over the last couple decades.
The late aughts were an era of live trees at great cost.
2007
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Then…in 2014, an arc on an artificial tree.
This all ended with a strip with some VERY FAMILIAR artwork.
I guess a couple years later, in 2016, they’d reinvested in fake.
And early in the Davis era, in 2018, another new artificial tree. And Pam is the one who throws a fit over fakery, despite a few years earlier championing the idea. I’ll let the continuity error slide this time, as the jokes in the arc are at least smirk worthy.
But I guess nostalgia won out again by 2020.
I’ve gotten a real tree ever since I moved out on my own, usually white pine, though I’ve also paid top dollar for some frasier furs. My mom has a three piece artificial tree she’s used ever since my sister scored a husband allergic to pine.
How about your nitters? Real or fake.
Son of Stuck Funky 
My family owns an artificial tree that we hang up every year for Christmas
ComicBookHarriet,
Happy New Year!
In the ‘50’s, we had real trees and the big electric Christmas tree bulbs. There was a bubbler light bulb that was my favorite.
I guess that whole apparatus lasted to the 1960’s. Then we got a silver aluminum tree. The Holy Grail!
There were no lights to hang. It had a separate revolving colored wheel that illuminated the tree into hundreds of tiny reflections. It was glorious.
I was number 4 kid out of 5. If you rubbed your feet on the carpet and touched the tree, such a nice spark. Then the older kids learned one could shock the others after rubbing their feet. It was madcap warfare! Shuffle! Shuffle! Touch the brother or sister. Enjoy the squeal. Rinse. Repeat.
Nothing say Christmas joy better that electrical trauma. Joy! Rapture!
Good times. Good times.
Sorial Promise
💝♥️💖🫂🌺💐🌹
Artificial. They last for years and only Ed can make them a fire hazard.
12/29: He gets more merch from the Bombers.
I bet it’s another fucking award.
Probably. It’s all about giving dumb people a big trophy.
This is the day when I like to point out that A Charlie Brown Christmas absolutely destroyed aluminum Christmas trees. The story made them a symbol of everything that was commercialized, tacky, and artificial about the holidays. After a couple years, department stores couldn’t give them away anymore.
So artificial Christmas trees that look like actual trees don’t bother me at all. We’ve been saved from far greater offenses against Yuletide aesthetics. You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.
They’ve been destroyed so thoroughly, people thought Schultz made them up.
Not gonna lie. The 2012 one is pretty funny. And there were a couple more that were as well. That’s what makes Batthack so infuriating. He can put out some funny stuff. He just seems to go through the motions and has become lazy.
I like real trees, but the convenience of artificial is nice as well.
I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas
The line “a Christmas tree costs an arm and a leg” just makes me want to respond, “oh, does Becky have half of one?”
Today’s Crankfuckery
(sound of crickets)
Oh, this is not crickets. This is the very, very loud sound of a drowning man desperately trying to cling to what little flotation he’s got left.
Batiuk wants to give himself another Mary Sue award, and wants to give even more free ad space to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. So he tries to conceal this by pretending to pander to Funky Winkerbean‘s once-existent readership of football fans. Unfortuately for him, all his constituencies other than hate-readers and snarkers checked out at least 15 years ago. So what we have is a non-existent story, wrapped in a non-existent joke, being told to a non-existent audience.
“No, really, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers added Ed’s play to their playbook! And they sent him an honorary game helmet, which is way better than the honorary game ball they already gave him! You know, that <sarcasm>time-honored football tradition!</sarcasm>” Give me a fucking break, Tom Batiuk. And spare me Crankshaft taking the rest of the week to gloat about it (smirk)!
Today’s Crankfuckery
Ed: Look what else that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers gave me: CD releases of All Killer No Filler by Sum 41 and When Broken Is Easily Fixed by Silverstein!
Thanks for the tunes!
Another helmet to be displayed lovingly! Makes a matched set with the Widder Bushka’s Bull Helmet.
Hey, wouldn’t it be something if the Blue Bombers were *also* trying to cover up insurance fraud, this time by shipping the helmet out of the country?
I’ve detected the pattern in the past Christmas strips: it’s really, really important to have an opinion about artificial vs. natural Christmas trees! It doesn’t matter what that opinion is, or if it changes from year to year; it just has to exist. Because the world must know that the composition of your Christmas tree is a Very Important Thing That Must Be Done Correctly! Like high school, comic books, and which Canadian football team and 1930s movie serial you’re supposed to like.
The joke is on him because the Riders won the Grey Cup….and the Labour Day Rematch. Serves Winnipeg right for embracing Crankshaft.
I grew up in a family that was devoted to buying real trees every year (usually noble firs, pretty… and pretty expensive I learned as an adult) and I have carried on that tradition with my wife and daughter, though my parents and sister have since reversed course and put up artificial trees.
The current tradition for my family is that my daughter picks out a tree from the small selection available at the grocery store that is a less than 10 minute walk from our home and then I carry the tree back to the house. Wife and daughter drive back home ahead of me so they can wait in the driveway and tell me how silly I look carrying the tree down the street. I think we all enjoy it. Lucky me, my daughter picked a fairly small tree this year, about as big as what was left of the Murdochs’ 2010 tree. I carried (well, dragged) a 6 foot tree home a few years ago… at least it was a good workout.
https://ibb.co/Z6N5ZHCX
No tree this year. This young, go-getting vandal threw himself into my life a few months ago, and no Christmas tree could possibly withstand his exuberant wrath. He’s already destroyed a shower curtain, fell into a full bathtub, and got himself stuck in my jacket sleeve so firmly, I had to cut the sleeve open with scissors to get him out.
Cat Tax: Paid! Same story for this household, incidentally. Two male cats who are both older now, but we don’t have enough space anyway.
12/31: BD would like a word.
today’s Crankfuckery
(Crankshaft then takes off the Blue Bombers helmet and then puts on his signature hat)
Jeff: Despite everything, it’s still (in a voice dripping with contempt) you.
I was in about 5th or 6th grade when I went to a friend’s house and saw my first aluminum tree, complete with rotating color wheel. I thought it was cool but it was too sterile-looking for my taste.
It was an exciting time, with humans being shot into space and Nike missile batteries being built in my city. I didn’t know whether I would soon be soaring through the sky in my flying car or personal jet pack, or vaporized by a Russian H bomb.
My family always had real trees, decorated with big old lights wired in series, bubble lights on a cloth-wrapped cord, blown glass ornaments, and aluminum tinsel. My great uncle grew Christmas trees on his property, and over the years we had different long and short needle trees. My dad, uncle, and I sometimes helped my great uncle with tree sales on busy Saturdays before Christmas. Since I was a little kid my job was to crawl underneath the tree and tie a piece of twine on one of the lowest branches. The adults would push up the branches and wrap the tree with twine before cutting it down with a handsaw. In between customers we would warm up in the garage; me with hot chocolate and the big guys with my great uncle’s wine that he made from the fat Concord grapes that he grew. It must have been good, because it made them squint their eyes and smack their lips.
There were at least two trees we had that had the root ball still attached and were later planted in the yard. The last time I saw them in 1997 they were at least 25 feet tall. After the kids moved out my mom switched to an artificial tree. Mrs. drunkenbeard and I always put up her artificial tree covered with sentimental ornaments from both our families, but since she’s been gone it remains in it’s box in the crawl space. I do display the Christmas cards I get.
It’s amazing how often Tom Batiuk’s jokes and drama are the same thing. That Christmas tree cost and arm and a leg, which is a joke you definitely don’t want to say around Becky! The Blue Bombers commemorate Ed with his own helmet, just like the one Bull Bushka died in! And his wacky Christmas story used the same coloring as Schindler’s List!