First Dog on the Moon’s The Story of the Christmas Story

Andrew Marlton, Text

It’s the Christmas story Jim, but not as we know it.

Let helpful Christmas scallops (the scholars were unavailable) walk you through the confusing world of the past. Helpful tips include “embroidery: a kind of Playstation but without electricity” and that the past was “a time of beards. There were beards everywhere.”

Who else could present Christmas so delightfully but the one and only First Dog on the Moon? For the uninitiated, FDOTM (also known as Andrew Marlton) is the resident cartoonist for Crikey.

His irreverent take on Australian politics includes drawing Julia Gillard as a “power fox”, Tony Abbott as an appendage lost inside a pair of budgie smugglers and Christopher Pyne as a rainbow poodle.

This year, he has turned his attentions to Christmas, with hilarious results. His interpretation of “the story of the Christmas story” is both ridiculous and true to form.

Deeply idiosyncratic and hand drawn, FDOTM gently teases the biblical inconsistencies in the Christmas story and the deeply bizarre world of renaissance nativity scene art.

Your guides to this world (along with the scallops) are dogs, angel cheeses with accordions, donkeys in beards and toasters.

This is not the most appropriate gift for your religiously conservative friends. Instead, settle down with your slightly kooky friends and be prepared to laugh at the improbability of the Christmas story as well as some of the weirder traditions that have grown up around Christmas.

The disclaimer reads: “All research was done as shonkily as possible, mostly via the internet and a free copy of the Bible I got one time.” Do not expect accuracy.
Instead, expect giggles, adorably donkeys wearing beards and family Christmas silliness. Merry Christmas.

Amy Goodhew