Harper's Weekly cartoons of Thomas Nast, who was recruited in 1862 and worked with the "Weekly" for more than 20 years. Nast was a feared caricaturist, and is often called the father of American political cartooning. He was the first to use an elephant as the symbol of the Republican Party. He also drew the legendary character of Santa Claus; his version became strongly associated with the figure, who was popularized as part of Christmas customs in the late nineteenth century. "Harper's Weekly" was the most widely read journal in the United States throughout the period of the Civil War. So as
The Christmas Album (Lynn Anderson album) Nashville country music songwriters of the day was enormously popular and became a Christmas classic itself among country music and American popular music fans. The album's opening song "Ding-A-Ling the Christmas Bell" was released as a single and at one point considered as a possible Christmas cartoon special but the project never got off the ground. The album was in print for a decade and, in the 1990s, Sony released limited quantities on CD with new cover art (the image shown above). In 2015 it was reissued on CD by the Real Gone Music label, with alternate charity single mixes