The Peanuts Christmas Countdown Panels redux ... redux!

The very first countdown panel: December 2, 1963

[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.]

To paraphrase Al Pacino, in The Godfather, Part 3:

 

Every time I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

 

The previous post on this topic had been live for barely a day, when I was contacted by two similarly dogged researchers  — Sean and Joseph, take a bow! — with incontrovertible evidence that the Peanuts countdown panels had begun significantly earlier than 1967, which I thought was the debut year.

 

(After originally having thought, back in the day, that 1982 was the debut year. Yeesh!)

 

Drum roll, please: This annual tradition began all the way back in 1963!

 

Those four earliest years — 1963 through ’66 — didn’t attract nearly as many client newspapers; my now verycarefully researched tally rarely found more than two dozen hits ... and the total often was less than one dozen.

 

As was the case from 1967 through ’70, these panels did not run on Sundays, which were not regarded as “shopping days,” due to the “blue laws” described in the aforementioned previous post. The “XX shopping days” countdowns for 1963 through ’66 also did not include Sundays, for the same reason.

 

And here’s a fun fact:

 

December 19, 1963

All countdown panels are lifted from individual panels within various Peanuts newspaper strips. I’ve never attempted to source any of the later panels — 1982 through 2011 — because the search would have been prohibitive, given the massive volume of options. But that wasn’t the case back in 1963, when the strip was only 13 years old. It seemed logical to assume that at least some — if not all — of 1963’s countdown panels were lifted from strips that had appeared earlier that year ... and, indeed, that proved to be true. Two countdown panels are taken from the October 20 Sunday strip, when a nervous Sally sneaks her curious big brother through the house, until they hide behind the couch and she confesses, “We prayed in school today.” The rarely seen character 5 appears in another countdown panel, taken from the September 30 strip in which he debuted. 

I’m not curious enough (or obsessed enough) to ID all of them; I’ll leave that to folks with more time on their hands.

 

So, the final tally for these four recently discovered years:

 

• 1963 produced 20 panels, which began on Monday, December 2 (in newspapers that paid proper attention to the math involved) and concluded on Tuesday, December 24.

 

• 1964 produced 21 panels, which began on Tuesday, December 1, and concluded on Thursday, December 24.

 

One of 1965's new panels: December 11

• 1965 was ... bizarre. 21 panels ran from Wednesday, December 1, through Friday, December 24 ... but most of them were reruns from 1964! Right, I said most ... because four panels were new: those appearing on December 11, 15, 20 and 22 (although they also had 1964 copyright dates). Why reruns? Why four new panels within the reruns? Who knows? (I’d give a lot to find somebody who does know!) The fact that most were reruns may account for the noticeably smaller number of client newspapers that published any of them.

• 1966 produced only 18 panels, which began on Monday, December 5, and concluded on Saturday, December 24 (similar to the way the feature was handled in 1967 and ’68).

 

And yes, I’m emphatically certain that Peanuts countdown panels did not exist prior to 1963. Dennis the Menace starred in 1962’s panels, which ran December 1-24; panels appearing in 1961 and earlier were generic, usually with an image of Santa Claus. Panels for 1971, and the subsequent decade, also were generic.

 

So: United Feature Syndicate — later United Media — ran two sets of panels: from 1963 through 1970, and then 1982 through 2011. Why the 11-year gap? Another question unlikely to be answered.

The good news, of course, is that 5CP now has oodles of unseen-since-original-publication sets of panels to share, moving forward. It’s a shame they’ll debut only one year at a time!