Today's Non Sequitur stands out in a crowd of fruitcake jokes and gags about kids attempting to mug Santa for his presents.
But, the topic having been raised, where did "Mrs. Claus" come from, anyway? The only saints I can think of off the top of my head whose lives included marriage are Agnes, Barbara and Elisabeth of Hungary, and only Elisabeth was actually married, though, sure enough, her spouse criticized her choice of clothing, or, at least, he questioned the way it fit her.
St. Nicholas himself was a bishop, though neither his time period nor his Eastern location would have required that clergy be unmarried. In any case, his original giving of gifts was three dowries for poor girls, so he evidently wasn't opposed to the institution.
A couple hundred years of the same joke might change his mind, of course ...
I have added paper comics that are not in my local paper to my web bookmarks. I have been impressed by Mother Goose, it is consistently funny at a level that reminds me of xkcd.
Posted by: Old Prof. Otter | 12/24/2010 at 01:54 PM