Puck Christmas Number

Puck, barefoot in a short red tunic, leans in to poke a roaring fire in a broad brick hearth. Stockings patterned like the stars and stripes hang from the mantel, and the smoke curling up carries the faces of the year's caricatured public men. A great log at the grate is labeled 1897. PUCK sits in white block capitals at the top; CHRISTMAS NUMBER glows in green at the foot. The palette runs hot, oranges and golds against the shadowed brick, the kind of firelit warmth a color press could show off. Burning the old year in effigy while its politicians dissolve into smoke is the magazine's habit of mind: even the holiday hearth is an editorial page. Puck tends the blaze like a small red imp of judgment.