Post Christmas Moods In Art and Illustration

The period between Christmas and New Year is a classic example of a liminal space in which we feel this sense of unease, captured best through art, perhaps.

The Day After Christmas by Mark Lancelot Symons (1887-1935) 1931
The Day After Christmas by Mark Lancelot Symons (1887-1935) 1931
Amos Sewell Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post February 1954
Amos Sewell Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post February 1954
Parents’ Magazine December 1937
Perry Barlow, December 26, 1936
Nikolai Ivanovich Feshin. Christmas Tree, 1917
Tom Lovell (American illustrator, 1909-1997) Christmas Morning
Woman’s World Magazine December 1919

The kids are coming down from their sugar highs but hey, at least they’re sweet.

You ate too much and now you’re stuck in a pot, clinging onto a greeting from someone you hope is a real friend and will therefore come to your aid.

I get the feeling this little boy is taking some quiet alone time at the end of Christmas Day to reflect while surrounded by his new toys.

By the Quiet Hearth by Maximilian Schäfer (1851-1916) Christmas tree

Between 1893 and 1895 Beatrix Potter illustrated a series of pictures for rabbits having a Christmas Party. She takes us from arrival through to departure.

CONTEMPORARY FICTION SET IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND (2023)

On paper, things look fine. Sam Dennon recently inherited significant wealth from his uncle. As a respected architect, Sam spends his days thinking about the family needs and rich lives of his clients. But privately? Even his enduring love of amateur astronomy is on the wane. Sam has built a sustainable-architecture display home for himself but hasn’t yet moved into it, preferring to sleep in his cocoon of a campervan. Although they never announced it publicly, Sam’s wife and business partner ended their marriage years ago due to lack of intimacy, leaving Sam with the sense he is irreparably broken.

Now his beloved uncle has died. An intensifying fear manifests as health anxiety, with night terrors from a half-remembered early childhood event. To assuage the loneliness, Sam embarks on a Personal Happiness Project:

1. Get a pet dog

2. Find a friend. Just one. Not too intense.

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