The Peanuts Christmas countdown panels redux

November 28, 1982

[Authors’ note: 5CP posts generally are informal, like newspaper press releases. But as was the case with the original post on this subject, and because of the way this particular saga unfolded, a first-person approach seemed best. As a result, Derrick once again is stepping out from behind the curtain.]

Before we get started, it would be helpful to first read the original article linked above; some of what follows assumes as much.

Every three to four years, I spend a fresh week (or two) with newspapers.com, because this invaluable subscription site constantly adds new — or, rather, old — publication archives. My primary focus is on hitherto unknown nuggets about jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi's career; I always hope to add fresh entries to my comprehensive Guaraldi timeline. Newly included regional newspapers are the best bet, since they're likely to cover activities never mentioned in The Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle or other big-city newspapers. And, indeed, my recent search proved quite fruitful.

But I also had a secondary goal. I wasn't satisfied with my initial round of research regarding the annual Peanuts Christmas countdown panels; I've chafed at my clearly incomplete results for the first two years — 1982 and '83 — and I also was pretty sure that one 1984 panel hadn't been found. 

Determined to solve the above-noted issues, I dove back into the archives.

And emerged victorious ... after considerable effort. (Hey, research is its own reward.)

Starting with 1982 — when the cartoons were small squares, roughly the size of a Peanuts newspaper strip panel — I verified that the run began on November 28, the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and produced 27 different panels through December 24. Check out the very first panel, at the top of this post.

(The feature concluded on December 24 until 1993; an additional Christmas Day panel didn’t begin until 1994.)

December 11, 1982

Thanks to lessons learned during my initial research, I initially focused on the phrase "shopping days." Unfortunately, after exhausting that search, I lacked four panels from 1982's run. It seemed unlikely that United Media had skipped those days, so it took some time to find a newspaper that obligingly ran the panels on the front page every day, and published seven days a week. At which point, the problem became obvious, as you can see in the December 11 panel, at right.

Different wording!

Happily, that newspaper yielded all four of the missing panels, which completed the run.

This format was repeated in 1983; the small square panels began on November 27 — again, the Sunday following Thanksgiving — and continued through December 24, this time yielding a run of 28. One example is shown below left. Once again, several were "wording outliers" that didn't use the phrase "shopping days," but this time I was prepared.

Beginning in 1984, the panels assumed their more “formal” appearance, although that year's starting date was a bit odd. Thanksgiving was early that year, on November 22 ... but the first panel didn't appear until the following Wednesday, November 28! This once again resulted in a run of 27, which confirmed my earlier fear; I had missed one, the first time around. Fortunately, it was quickly found.

December 24, 1983

Many newspaper editors still modified the appropriate number of “shopping days to Christmas” at their discretion. This was obvious, because of the wide variety of type fonts used to convey that message; once again, that meant that the same panel would pop up in different papers, with a different countdown number, and often on different days. Quantitative comparison came to the rescue. First, it became obvious that United Media's original font was dark and bold. Second, if the same panel appeared in (for example) 80 out of 100 newspapers on a given day, with the appropriate United Media font, it clearly was the correct one.

Duplicating that analysis ultimately revealed the correct sequence for all subsequent years. We therefore wound up with 15 "new" years' worth of earlier panels; we've already resurrected 1987-89 and '93 during the past four years, so — moving forward — you'll be treated to 11 more unseen-since-original-publication runs.

You'll see this year's resurrected series later this week — one per day starting November 29, on this blog's home page — when we revive the panels from 1985.

********

That's where this post would have concluded, when written several months ago, because — well — I thought the story was complete.

Life is full of surprises...

In late October, I received an email from Benjamin L. Clark, curator at Santa Rosa's Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center. We'd previously exchanged a few notes concerning the Peanuts countdown panels, so he knew about my interest. 

He called my attention to an eBay sale that featured "a large lot of 1966-69 Peanuts newspaper comic strip dailies with a Christmas focus." The attached photos included the one at right.

Benjamin called my attention to the items at lower left.

My jaw dropped. 

A different style of countdown panels ... and the 1969 copyright date was visible.

1969?!?!

I returned to newspapers.com before drawing another breath.

December 4, 1967

Over the course of the next several days, I established that this style of countdown panels ran for four years, from 1967 to 1970, inclusive. I successfully obtained full sets for each year ... although a few hiccups hampered the process. 

For starters, each run began in December, rather than the day after Thanksgiving. 

More crucially, the countdown numbering didn't seem correct. As a typical example, a December 4 panel claimed "17 shopping days left 'til Christmas." 

The light finally dawned, when I realized that — in the late 1960s and early '70s — Sunday still wasn't considered a shopping day.

(My, how times have changed...!)

This also explains the "apparent" math error in the second panel of this Peanuts strip, originally published December 10, 1965 (click on it for a larger image):

The younger generation has no memory of this, but well into the 1970s and '80s, many stores remained closed on Sundays due to "blue laws," which were put in place to comply with the Christian Sabbath. The first blue law was enacted in Virginia in 1617. Also known as Sunday Closing Laws or Lord's Day Acts, they prohibited the sale of certain goods on Sundays to uphold local moral and cultural standards. As one example, in Pennsylvania, blue laws prohibited the sale of many retail goods on Sundays until 1978, when the state Supreme Court overturned them. Some states maintained blue laws well into the 21st century, and New Jersey's Bergen County still maintains one. 

Regardless, these days the notion of stores being closed on Sundays — by law — seems absurd.

United Feature Syndicate also assumed that most newspapers wouldn't run a panel on Sundays ... which initially proved confusing, since I wasted a lot of time searching dozens of Sunday newspapers, until the significance of Sunday store closures became apparent. 

All this said, many newspaper editors were quite math-challenged, changing the numbers within given panels, and running them on wildly incorrect days.

The final tally:

December 24, 1970

• 1967 produced 18 panels; newspapers that printed them accurately began on December 4, and concluded on December 23. 

• 1968 produced 20 panels, usually beginning on December 2, and again concluding on December 23.

• 1969 also produced 20 panels, usually beginning on December 1, and concluding on December 24 ... with a sweet holiday message, as shown at right.

• 1970 produced 21 panels, also beginning on December 1, and concluding on December 24.

I also noticed a rather disturbing detail.

In 1968, once most newspapers got on board — some didn’t start right away — I found between 22 and 40 client newspapers for each Peanuts panel, on a given day…

December 8, 1968

…except on December 9, which came back with only 10 hits. A very low number.

Franklin debuted in the regular newspaper comic strip on July 31 that year, and December 9 was the only countdown panel in which he appeared that month.

Most of the papers that ran these panels were small regional publications, and a high percentage were in the Deep South. 

You can connect the dots.

Happily, things weren't quite as bad in 1969. Franklin's sole appearance, on December 8, was on the low end of average (21 hits), but at least it wasn't egregiously low. (He didn't appear in any 1970 panels.)

To employ advertising-speak, this four-year run didn't have near the penetration of the later series, when (for example) a given 1988 panel could be found in hundreds of newspapers, large and small. I never found more than 50 hits on a given day, from 1967 through '70, and more than 40 was rare. That may have contributed to the syndicate's decision to stop after 1970 ... until reviving the tradition 12 years later.

On a final note, I must say that all four of these sets employed better Schulz panels, and better "special dialogue," than some of the later runs that began in 1982. (I also must note that Schulz never had anything to do with any of the countdown panel captions; that was handled in-house by United Feature/United Media staffers.)