Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson for April 08, 2014

Mom should hose him down in the backyard.

The Chimney! I guess you left your trusty companion, Hobbes, outside because he is still clean! ;)

Santa never complains.

So how come Santa can come through without getting dirty?

As black as night, that will need an abundant, thorough bath!

When Santa shrinks down to fit in the chimney he doesn’t touch the sides.

No wonder Calvin doesn’t have any sibling’s!

I wonder why that is…as a kid, you resist getting into the bath or shower…and then once there, you resist getting out. Kind of like going to bed on the weekend a few years later…you don’t wanna go to bed, and then no power on earth can drag you out of it.

Hiding in a chimney before a bath… kinda like the old joke of eating a whole box of Oreos in the dentist waiting room… get your money’s worth.

I know a little boy who, if he had a fireplace at his house, would do this. He’s been a big challenge all his life; I’m surprised he’s lived this long. He’s 9.

Yah, Santa and Mary Poppins come out all clean …

This is one of my favorites. so simple and perfect.

I remember getting hosed down as a kid. Water was frickin’ cold too!

Chim Chiminey Chim Chimeny chim charoo, it’s clean now.

like be crazy mom…

Tsk. Someone ought to tell him blacking up is frowned upon.

My brother had a brief stint in his teens as a furnace-flue cleaner (ie chimney sweep in the modern world). Night after night he left black sludge in the bathtub, and couldn’t imagine why his sisters refused to clean it out after him!! The parents eventually got tired of him coming home looking like a California Raisin and told him to get another job.

Calvin had his ashes hauled, to the bathtub!

Love Calvin’s ‘evil eyes’ in the last panel.xxx

Calvin’s activities are St. Peter’s account of my boyhood. Definitely: snakes and snails and puppy-dog’s tails, and hunting and magnifying glasses and ants and really big fire crackers and misplaced fires and probation officers then adulthood then university then Bell Labs and Top Secret Clearance then 33.5 years later, retirement.

The grim reality behind those Mary Poppins scenes: Victorian houses had a fireplace in every room and very intricate chimney and flue systems, which could not be cleaned by just pushing a brush through. So small boys were used as self-propelled chimney brushes. Since creosote and ashes are full of carcinogens and toxins, the adult sweeps were always on the lookout for more boys. Orphans preferred, but in a pinch they might try to inveigle a middle-class kid into running away.

Twas the Night before Christmas

“He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;”

Yes Santa suffers from the same problem.