This year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the Walt Disney Company's lesser know holiday traditions. Beginning in 1960, Disney-produced, holiday-themed comic strips were featured in newspapers across the country. Each year a strip was launched in late November and typically ran for approximately four weeks before ending on December 24. The very first of these annual comic strips was Peter Pan's Christmas Story.
The story, consisting of 24 daily strips, featured Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Captain Hook and Mr. Smee and also included the Seven Dwarfs. It was written by Frank Reilly with art by Manuel Gonzales.
For many of us baby boomers, these annual "bonus" comic strips were a very big deal indeed. We would clip and collect them and ultimately put them in a safe place where we would never find them again. I stumbled upon the strips recently while conducting some wholly unrelated research and it was like magically unlocking an obscure and completely forgotten childhood memory.
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