Just added to the AAUGH.com Reference Library: the December 1968 issue of Woman’s Day magazine. Why? Because starting on page 46, there’s a four page, twelve panel original Peanuts tale: “The Christmas Story”. As Snoopy listens on, Linus quotes from the bible (the same quote he’d put forth on TV three years earlier) and Lucy muses on Santa. Like the better-known “Charlie Brown’s Christmas Stocking” from five years earlier, this is a “lost” piece of real Schulz, unreprinted in the ensuing years. The story, black linework on colored pages, is such a draw that it’s the focus of the cover.

It’s a nice little piece (although admittedly, I like “Christmas Stocking” better), and given the strong public connection between Peanuts and Christmas, I’m a bit surprised that these works haven’t been put to more use. (Although I did recently learn that “Christmas Stocking” was put to a double use at the time; Charles and Joyce Schulz used extra copies as their Christmas card!)

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