Garfield

The Most Relatable Cat in Comics — On the Keepsake Tree Since 1990

Jim Davis's Garfield debuted in newspapers on June 19, 1978 — a comic strip about an overweight orange tabby cat with a passionate hatred of Mondays, an endless appetite for lasagna, a love of coffee, and a profound aversion to effort in all its forms. Within four years of its debut Garfield had become the most widely syndicated comic strip in the world — 2,580 newspapers across 111 countries, a record that stood for decades. The character is, at his core, a very simple idea executed with absolute consistency: an animal whose dominant mood is contempt for the conditions of existence, delivered with enough self-awareness and wit to make that contempt charming rather than simply grim. Garfield has never pretended to be anything other than what he is. This is the secret of his fifty-year appeal.

Hallmark produced Garfield Keepsake ornaments from 1990 through 1995 — five entries across six years: a glass ball, Garfield as an angel on a star (3" tall, 1991), Garfield in a Santa hat reading bedtime stories in dog slippers (1992), and Garfield as an angel playing a trumpet from a comic strip scene (1995). Then, in 1996, Garfield took what turned out to be the longest nap in Keepsake history. Twenty-nine years passed. No new ornament. In 2024, Garfield returned — a Baby Garfield Walmart exclusive tied to Sony Pictures' *The Garfield Movie* (May 2024, Chris Pratt as Garfield's voice, Samuel L. Jackson as Vic, Garfield's father). And in 2025, Nickelodeon Garfield: 2.25" × 3.25" × 1.5", standing pose, arms crossed, mischievous smirk. "Garfield lives the dream as a lazy, sarcastic, yet surprisingly endearing, house cat."

Tips for the Collection

• 01
  Display the vintage and modern eras as the two chapters they are — with the 29-year gap acknowledged. The five 1990–1995 ornaments and the two 2024–2025 ornaments tell a story with a very long intermission. If you have entries from both eras, cluster them in two groups with visible space between — the gap is part of the narrative. Garfield was napping. Now he's back, arms crossed, as unimpressed as ever.
• 02
  The 1991 Angel on Star and 1992 Bedtime Stories are the vintage era's most characterful entries. Garfield as an angel (3" tall, perched on a star, halo and wings) is the vintage era's most visually distinctive ornament — the irony of the laziest cat in comics ascending to heavenly status is precisely the kind of joke Jim Davis built his career on. The 1992 Bedtime Stories — Santa hat, dog slippers, blanket, reading — is the warmest entry in the collection and the one that most reads as a holiday ornament rather than a character collectible.
• 03
  All 7 Garfield Hallmark ornaments — 1990 through 2025 — are at Already Christmas. The glass ball, the angel, the bedtime reader, the 1994 and 1995 entries, Baby Garfield from the movie, and the 2025 arms-crossed Nickelodeon smirker. Thirty-five years of the world's most relatably lazy cat. All seven here. It's not Monday yet.