Welcome to December, 1985! Arrow Air Flight 1985R would hilariously kill a whole plane full of U.S. troops on December 12th. Ricky Nelson would also die in a plane crash on December 31st after some lunatic fired a blowtorch for 45 minutes in the cabin (I’m guessing). And who is to blame for these horrific aviation accidents? The wacky hijinks of Calvin? We can’t rule that out!

December sees Calvin getting into more scoundrel mischief and general goofabouts. There’s a little bit of a Christmas story arc that involves Calvin asking his parents to buy a ton of presents for his stuffed tiger, in which they likely acquiesce begrudgingly. Calvin forgets to give Hobbes a present. Hobbes forgets to give Calvin a present. We all have a nice laugh at the expense of Jesus, who was completely overlooked during their heathen festivities.

But table that for now. We bring you to early December where Dad is doing poorly ahead of the midterms:

December 2, 1985 – These are some real Walter Mondale numbers, Pops.

Oh, that Calvin! It’s a good thing that Dad still wins all the elections in spite of his constantly tanking poll numbers. Five terms in a row over the course of the strip’s lifetime! That’s pretty good even if it smacks of being a career politician. You would think even ONCE that the household would vote against him in one of the elections. Especially Mom, who would rather have Patrick Swayze in the house instead. Lord knows I’d want to. Hubba hubba.

It makes me wonder. If Dad isn’t popular with tigers and six-year-old white males, then who is he popular with? 400-pound black women? 14-year-old Albanian male prostitutes? Ryan Seacrest? Yuck.

December 4, 1985 – This one must have gotten a lot of letters from angry freaks who had suffered debilitating brain aneurysms. The letters were like “DEATP BILIL WARTESTSON: AURDHSFSSDISJ.”

The complicated series-long love triangle starts on December 4th, 1985! We don’t even get to see Susie Derkins yet, but she shows up quite a few times before the end of the year. Hobbes represents Calvin’s inner desire to get all up in Susie’s guts, but Calvin will spend the better part of his endless six-year-old childhood tormenting her. Occasionally, Calvin or Susie will betray their true feelings, but it doesn’t happen often. This is obviously why they keep interacting with each other, but if I were Susie I’d give it up and find someone less psychopathic.

I really REALLY don’t want to check, but there has got to be millions of stories of Calvin and Susie fucking as teenagers that are clogging up the giant internet toilet. They might even have kids! Can you imagine that? Just a horde of urchins planning on blowing up airplanes and killing Ricky Nelson.

December 9, 1985 – Watterson continues to push boundaries with words like “skimpy” and “murder” and “ravishing” and “school”.

This strip always reminded me of those Peanuts strips where they all watch TV in a bean bag. I also found it odd that the TV is placed on Calvin’s bed, ready to be accidentally kicked off of it at a moment’s notice and broken into seventeen million pieces.

Watterson would always talk about some of the angry letters he’d get from adults who had nothing better to do than write letters to the editor. Or perhaps they would be from parents of children with antisocial tendencies who are one bad word away from throwing their feces at the other school children. This strip is a little too sexual if you ask me, and I’m too busy furiously jacking off to give Bill Watterson a piece of my mind here in 2022! I hope he reads this. Grrr.

December 14, 1985 – Moments before Calvin is abducted and driven to a hydroelectric sex dam in Washington State.

Finding pleasure in giving his parental units heart attacks, Calvin spends an hour fashioning a rope out of bedsheets as if he were escaping prison and then walks seventeen miles to a payphone outside of the city limits. Mom and Dad rush to their car and find all four tires slashed to shreds! All the neighbors have been murdered! By now, Calvin is surely on an airplane to Tristan da Cunha in the southern Atlantic Ocean, never to be seen again.

December 22, 1985 – Betrayal! Treason!

Ahahaha, oh Hobbes. Always the foil! Every time Calvin asserts a modicum of dominance over anything, even for fifteen seconds, Hobbes will be there to throw a snowball at his fucking face or splash him with caustic acid or dismember his stupid little limbs!

Calvin often does this thing where he declares some nonsense loudly to no one in particular. I imagine this kid is just yelling in the middle of a quiet, snowy afternoon, completely disturbing the peace. The neighborhood should be celebrating Hobbes’ infiltration and attack. At least no one had to call the cops.

December 24, 1985 – RIP Santa Claus at the age of 1,985. Died of starvation while trapped in a suburban American family’s chimney. He leaves behind a wife and dozens of filthy elves.

Christmas time in the Calvin and Hobbes household, as can be predicted, is never a peaceful ordeal either. If only Mom and Dad knew that Calvin was about to perform some shenanigans at their fireplace in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve, they would take this opportunity to throw every single gift in the fucking garbage and boot the kid out of the house with a one-way ticket to Tristan da Cunha!

December 29, 1985 – Death by oatmeal. It’s a horrible way to go.

Ahhh, that magical time between Christmas and New Year’s. One week where time seems to stand still. When the pressures of work don’t seem to matter at all. When the anticipation of new beginnings takes a brief pause. When good little Christian children can spend days uninterrupted by school to indulge in their new toys and games, or, if you will, their pursuits in destroying their meal. Boy vs. Breakfast! Who will win in the end!

Certainly not Calvin’s parents.

That wraps up 1985 already! Considering that the strip only started five weeks prior, that’s not a very substantial feat. Stay tuned next time when we crack open 1986 with a fucking baseball bat.