A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 10 November 1957. Santa Claus reads the North Pole News, whose headline says the U.S. Army will have a satellite up by Christmas, while reindeer look in at the window. Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at NARA (NAID 5743255).
What the cartoon shows
The archive describes Santa Claus at a wooden desk under a lantern, holding a newspaper, with reindeer looking in at a snowy window. The newspaper's masthead and headline are the only printed words besides the artist's line. The joke is in the title: Santa hopes nobody is planning a "Saint-nik."
NORTH POLE NEWS
U.S. ARMY SAYS IT WILL HAVE A SATELLITE UP BY CHRISTMAS!
JIM BERRYMAN WASHINGTON STAR
Who drew it and where it is kept
Jim Berryman drew it for the Washington Evening Star. The original is in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives, among the Jim Berryman political cartoons, item NAID 5743255. The archive's rights line records it as public domain, which describes the holding and not the newspaper's status. Berryman signed his work. FRAME classes the source as openly identified, the audience as the domestic public, and the themes as science and technology and war and the military.
How to read it
FRAME tags it transfer: Santa's alarmed look stands in for the public reaction to the idea of an artificial satellite competing with his sleigh. The tag fits loosely. This is a holiday gag built on a pun, and it carries its argument lightly.
What makes it worth a page is the headline Santa is reading. It is a promise attributed to the U.S. Army, with a deadline, printed as news. The cartoonist does not say whether the promise was wise or likely; he lets a fictional reader worry about it. Whether the satellite went up by Christmas is outside the record, and the page leaves it there.
"Saint-nik" only works if every reader already knows the word it twists. A cartoon like this is evidence of what a newspaper could assume its readers had on their minds. It is commentary, signed and sold in the open. For other Berryman cartoons on this site, see the 1955 polio vaccine cartoon and the 1960 Soviet Scales of Justice. The U.S. Information Agency's own 1958 photo poster on space-flight training, Survival in Space, shows how the government presented a related subject to readers abroad.
Sources
- FRAME object record, They'd better not be planning on a Saint-nik!, 10 November 1957. Washington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons, item NAID 5743255, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain.
