Skeezix's First Christmas, Gasoline Alley Daily Strip, 26 December 1921

Since Gasoline Alley's continuity progressed in real time, this is the original for Skeezix's first Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, 1921. Christmas fell on a Sunday that year, so this is as close as a daily strip could get to his first Christmas.

This daily was the first Gasoline Alley original which I ever bought. It had been given to a fan by Frank King shortly after it was drawn, which explained how it survived to be sold at a time when most people thought that King had destroyed all of his original art for daily strips. We now know that King actually kept many, if not most, of his originals. The fact that this one turned up on eBay years before the fate of all the Gasoline Alley dailies became known explains nothing more than why this great example was not hidden away with the King family for over 80 years, like all the other early dailies.