It’s day four of my marathon run to Christmas featuring all 42 labels from Anchor’s Christmas Ale — a.k.a. Our Special Ale — all different beers (well, mostly different) and all different labels, each one designed by local artist Jim Stitt, up to and including this year’s label.

1978 was the fourth year that Anchor made their Christmas Ale, and it was similar to the three previous year’s beers, a variation based on Liberty Ale, with no spices added. This fourth label was “[i]nspired by an evergreen in the Sierra Nevadas.”

It’s day three of my mad dash to Christmas featuring all 42 labels from Anchor’s Christmas Ale — a.k.a. Our Special Ale — all different beers (well, mostly different) and all different labels, each one designed by local artist Jim Stitt, up to and including this year’s label.

1977 was the third year that Anchor made their Christmas Ale, and it was similar to the two previous year’s beer, a variation based on Liberty Ale, with no spices added. This third label featured a “Douglas Fir,” or “Pseudotsuga menziesii.”

It’s day two of my march to Christmas featuring all 42 labels from Anchor’s Christmas Ale — a.k.a. Our Special Ale — all different beers (well, mostly different) and all different labels, each one designed by local artist Jim Stitt, up to and including this year’s label.

Although that’s not entirely true for 1976. Anchor’s historian, Dave Burkhart, explained that for this year the label was done by a different artist, Richard Elmore. “Fritz’s original idea was to use a different designer each year to design the new label but, although he has a great longtime working relationship with Richard to this day and the 1976 label turned out beautifully, he saw the wisdom and ease of just changing the tree and recipe each year and continued with one designer — Jim Stitt — from 1977 on.” A few years ago, Burkhart asked Stitt to draw another Giant Sequoia for a label so in that way, now it is possible for Jim to say, even though he could never say he designed all the Christmas labels, that he’d drawn all of the trees.

1976 was the second year that Anchor made their Christmas Ale, and it was similar to the previous year’s beer, which itself had been based on Liberty Ale, with no spices added. This second label featured a “Giant Sequoia,” or “Sequoiadendron giganteum.”

With 41 days until Christmas, 42 including today, I thought it would be fun to work through all 42 labels from Anchor’s Christmas Ale — a.k.a. Our Special Ale — all different beers (well, mostly different) and all different labels, each one designed by local artist Jim Stitt, up to and including this year’s label.

Jim Stitt and Fritz Maytag in 1979.

1975 was the first year that Anchor made their Christmas Ale, and it was apparently based on another beer they’d released earlier the same year, Liberty Ale, with no spices added. This first label featured a very simple silhouette of a Christmas tree.