I’m sorry.

There is so little that you as AAUGH Blog readers expecting. You know I will sometimes misspell, will repeat myself. You know I am capable of a bit of hucksterism. You know I will voice some awkward opinions, and will wield my own sense of “humor” that may or may not actually entertain. But there is one thing you could always rely on from me, and that’s that I would tell you when a new book edition of A Charlie Brown Christmas is out.

I have failed you.

Now, I hear you crying “but you’ve already told us about the new edition of the Running Press minibook in this year’s holiday boxed set of their minibooks. And you’ve told us about the pop-up edition. And you’ve told us about the Special Hallmark Edition with the buttons you push to play a sound. Surely you’re not telling us that there is another new edition this year?!?”

And the shame is that I’m not. It’s worse than that. There’s an edition that’s been out a year now without my detecting it! Somewhere between the 2008 Special Hallmark Edition with its red cloth cover and the 2010 Special Hallmark Edition with its sound buttons was a 2009 Special Hallmark Edition. Smaller than either of those other editions and without any electronic enhancements, one might question how special it is – but one would be wrong, for all book editions of A Charlie Brown Christmas are like all children – special in their own way, by their mere existence.

This book is, yet again, the same adaptation that premiered in 2008’s Running Press Deluxe Edition. Now, I’ve snarked a little at how that adaptation rewrote history by placing Peppermint Patty and Marcie into the special… but I only just noticed that it has rewritten history in a much more real level. On the back cover of not only this edition, but all three of the Special Hallmark Editions as well as the original Running Press one, is the statement that the television special “has aired annually for more than 45 years”. The special first aired in 1965, which means that this statement will become true with this year’s airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas as this will be the 46th year – but at the moment, it’s false, and it was certainly false when that first Running Press edition carried it in 2008.

I have, of course, added this book to the AAUGH.com Evergreen, Ever-growing Guide to A Charlie Brown Christmas books, which is now up to a glorious 33 entries

Huckster note: all week, Amazon is running Black Friday deals, big savings that only last for a few hours. You’ve missed things like 2-dollar Lord of the Rings DVDs and nicely cheap GPSes, plenty of more things are coming, lots of music, video games, stuff like that.

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