The latest addition to the AAUGH.com reference library is the December, 1958 issue of Better Homes and Gardens, the popular woman’s magazine. Now, if you’ve bought Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking, you would’ve seen two Christmas stories that Schulz did for other women’s magazines during the 1960s… but the original Peanuts story in this one beats those by years.

Only in a way, it’s not a full story. Oh, it’s a 12 panel tale, (more panels then the typical Sunday strip of the day, but smaller ones), and it reaches its punch line… but in a way, this is all set-up. As you can see from the first panel, Linus is learning his lines for the Christmas pageant, but that’s all he’s doing in this strip, learning the lines. He does get to deliver that line eventually, but not in the magazine. Instead, this all leads into the Sunday strip of December 21, 1958, where the pageant actually takes place.

What I wasn’t expecting in this magazine, however, was a little added feature. At the end of the Peanuts story, there’s a note that you could find a list of Peanuts books on page 120. I turned to page 120, and there it was, the thing that I’ve been working so long to achieve, that I’ve spent so many hours building AAUGH.com around… a list of all the Peanuts books that had ever been published. All five of them. And you cold mail-order any of them for a buck apiece from the publisher.

(Oh, okay, someone is going to take me seriously and note that The Brownie Book of Picture-Taking with Peanuts illustrations was already out by that time, and was not included in the list. True, true.)

If you want a copy of this Better Homes and Gardens issue, there actually are several copies available through Amazon.

Share the news!