Christmas pipes

Pictured in banner above: the first three Peterson Christmas pipes, from 2009 – 2011

Santa’s Little Helpers, the 304 Christmas pipe 2019

Almost every year during Advent or the first week of Christmas, we read or listen to Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, which against all odds hit the book stalls on December 19, 1843.  It was a personal statement for Dickens and one his publishers weren’t much interested in.  If you’ve seen The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017), you’ve got a fairly accurate portrait of the state of the author’s finances and family, the social frictions and inner frissons that propelled him.  Like everyone else in this world, he was a complex and often troubled person. Through it all, he seemed to get the most important things right, and I’m convinced one of them was Christmas.

I framed The X Pipe with Christmas stories—one back several decades and one a few years ago, hoping to show the distance we need to travel from disenchantment to wonder, from despair to hope.  One of the best tools I know for that journey is—and I see you’ve anticipated me—a good pipe and a quiet place to smoke.

Irish Times, December 1917

Enter Kapp & Peterson’s Christmas commemorative.  While Christmas was always an important time in Peterson’s early history (judging from the number of ads placed in Irish papers) the notion of an annual pipe commemorating the season arrived only 15 years ago, a decade after the introduction of the Pipe of the Year and the St. Patrick’s Day pipes.* Understandable, of course, given the great change in pipe smoking that had occurred as it went from the everyday practice of Everyman to the selected practice of hobbyists and contemplatives.

2009

When the first Christmas pipe appeared, it was—according to my best recollection—housed in an oversized red box with lid (white velvet inside) with a Christmas tree on it. Inside was the B33, one of the sextet of great River Collection shapes (2007), an inverted Christmas tree (if you will) with a metal mount (whether of nickel or sterling I cannot say) with laser-engraved Christmas tree and hot foil silver P on vulcanite F/T stem. It was the kind of pipe we’d expect Ebenezer Scrooge to have received from his nephew Fred.  I’m sure we can imagine this particular Christmas as the kind of Christmas still fully informed by Ebenezer’s resolution at the beginning of Stave 5 when he awoke from the final visitation:

            YES! AND THE BEDPOST was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
            “I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!” Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. “The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. O Jacob Marley! Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this!”

2010

However much we may think the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present, and Future will abide within us in the first full fire of the spirit, this is usually a more difficult operation that we supposed at 9 o’clock Christmas morning in front of the fire with spiced eggnog, a beautiful woman at our side, and some fragrant leaf burning in a new Pete.

When 2010 rolled around, aromatic tobacco fans undoubtedly had the Red Christmas Door tin under their trees, Elke Ullmann’s favorite of those she designed for Peterson.  The 2010 Christmas pipe—probably in a dozen shapes, although I don’t have anything to document that—was smooth, wine colored with a vulcanite F/T and nickel and green acrylic sandwich band.  A more or less anonymous-“Secret Santa” kind of affair.  Understated, to be charitable.

2011

The shape 11 Kapet rustic, as charming and elflike as it is, was not actually from the 2011 release, but a rarely-seen shape from the 1950s. A smooth, in fact, was recently sold on eBay.

The pipe and tin entries for Christmas 2011 were really well coordinated—another Elke stroke of genius.  The pipe is in green with a nickel and red acrylic sandwich band and hot foil P on the vulcanite F/T.  As you can see from the B10 below, there was still fabulous grain to be found on pipes in 2011:

2012

For 2012, there was another great pipe sleeve. The pipe, however, was an anonymous brown with hot foil P on a vulcanite F/T.  It did feature the Christmas tree, laser engraved on the nickel band. If, however, Father Christmas brought you a tin of Peterson’s 2012 Christmas blend, all was surely forgiven as this is an awesome tin (and I wish I had one)!

2013

The 2013 pipe pulled out all the stops for its sandwich band of nickel, red and green acrylic. Otherwise, the pipe was another standard brown stain Classic Range with hot foil P on the F/T vulcanite stem.  The box sleeve is the sort of thing that’s best enjoyed immediately and then tucked away somewhere out of sight.  The tin was much better and perhaps the artwork from it should had been used.

2014

There was the beginning of a sea change at Peterson in 2014 toward army mounts with acrylic F/T stems, which would be issued in ever-increasing numbers until 2018. But here we have a pipe that announces its Christmas intention and succeeds, making good use of its pineapple rustication!*  The tin art is again fabulous as well, and in combination this was a great Christmas morning for the blessed recipient!

This year I received the B33, one of those great B shapes that always trickled into the annual commemoratives during this period of the company’s history.  I adored the B33, collected and tried to companion three or four of them, but could never master the art of lighting a pipe with a bowl canted away from me and let them go.  Looking back, I wish I’d made more of an effort.

The “Deputy Shephard” Mr. Stiggins, Nonconformist minister of the United Grand Junction, Ebenezer Temperance Association, in Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers

(* With a nod to Mr. Stiggins, that odious frequenter of Mrs. Weller’s taproom in Pickwick Papers whose sole redeeming grace was his over-reliance on pineapple rum, which he took as a hot grog—that is, half pineapple rum and half hot water sweetened with 3 lumps of sugar.  It’s an excellent Christmas beverage and I can’t recommend its “medicinal” virtues too highly at this time of year.)

2015

For 2015, Elke and the Peterson design team really outdid themselves.  Looking at these nickel-band Christmas pipes always puts me in mind of the Molly Malone set and the 2016 Roundstone Spigots, although I actually prefer this quieter look. It’s the quiet Christmas aesthetic that we’re always looking for in our lives but rarely seem to find with its soft matt brown blasting and rich swirl acrylic F/T stem with its hot foil silver P.  The tin and pipe box sleeve are wholly in accord, as is the laser-engraved Santa on the nickel band. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect Barbara Stanwyck to give Fred MacMurray at the end of one of my favorite Christmas movies, Remember the Night (1940).

2016

I really, really like the 2016 Christmas “Elf” Army mounts, with their shiny emerald swirl acrylic F/T and silver hot foil P stems and rich matte ruby bowls. If you got back and look at the various shapes offered, they all just seem to radiate the joy of the season.  It would be incredible to run across an XL90 in this line, but have you ever noticed that the Christmas pipes almost never, ever come up on eBay?  Why is that, I wonder? Notice also that once again the tin and box sleeve work to create a really fantastic triptych of Pete Geek paradise.

2017

For 2017, a return to the acrylic army mount, this time with a pearl swirl, hot foil P and F/T stem on a slightly different contrast brown over red blast, in 12 shapes.  Another fine pipe box sleeve and, alas, the final Christmas tin!  It’s a shame that, from a business standpoint, these kinds of tobacco tins—painted (no stickers) and often hinged, can’t be made profitable.  Every few months I devote some quality time to searching eBay for old tins of my favorite tobaccos, or tobaccos I wish I’d been able to smoke.  From the standpoint of an armchair cultural anthropologist (which describes you as well as me), these artifacts have staying power.  Non-smokers always seem to have these empty tins tucked away somewhere, because they’re not only useful for holding various small articles but, of course, a joy to behold.

2018

In Christmas 2018 the pipe box sleeves disappeared (causing sighs and tears among the faithful), yet the pipes themselves were a spectacular issue.

I toot my own party horn here because this was the first issue of the famous shamrock-wolf hound-round tower nickel-mount marks since the early 1960s, and they appeared because of a conversation I had with then-acting director Conor Palmer. What’s more—and this we lay to Conor’s door—the ferrules of this army mount were, for the first time, in copper.  That’s been something that has rung the changes on Peterson’s Christmas pipe bells almost ever since.  The deep ruby sandblast works well with the copper ferrules and black acrylic F/T with its copper hot foil P, don’t you think?

2019

I’ve gone on in earlier posts far too long about the 2019 copper army mount to say too much about it here. The rustication is of a beautifully crunchy variety, heightened by the chocolate contrast stain and chocolate acrylic F/T stem with its copper ferrules copper-colored hot foil P.  It was released in a dozen shapes.

Two of my favorites are seen here: the 05 and the 68. (Okay, I will say that it’s curious that the 2018 Christmas pipe was visually so similar to the 2019. Sure the 2018 was a sandblast, but if you put the two side by side, you’d almost say the 2018 was a warm-up for the superior 2019.)

2020

For 2020, Peterson returned again to the beautiful copper ferrule with its faux hallmarks, red swirl acrylic F/T stem (no copper hot foil P this time), joining it to a black sandblast of Classic Range shapes. What was fun in this year’s release, especially, was the appearance of some unexpected shapes: the D5 (probably it’s exit from the catalog), D15 and D16. The glowing red/black stems (on some the pipes, as others had the more muted chocholate), shiny coal bowls and copper accents are extremely festive.

2021

For 2021, the “imagineers” at K&P put on their deerstalkers and Inverness capes and came out with a true “three pipe problem”—which finish to get the Sherlock Holmes Christmas pipe in?  I know a few Pete Geeks, like our own Dixon Smith, who have managed to gather an entire set of these. I felt the acrylic F/Ts were as comfortable and smoked every bit as well as the 2018 POY “Gaslight”’s acrylic F/T, which is saying a lot.

2022

The beautiful copper spigots (and faux hallmarks) were back for 2022, this time with Classic Range F/T black acrylic stems. They appeared in the dark brown Heritage smooth and the rustic finishes in a huge assortment of shapes.

2023

There was difficulty sourcing the copper mounts in 2023. Almost as if to make up for the massive shock and disappointment (I’m sure only amongst the small band of maniacal Pete Geeks), this year’s Christmas pipe sought to make up for it with the return of the double-bead sterling band (which I’d heard from reliable sources was a thing of the past), a vulcanite stem and an aluminum P.  These were reserved in the past for higher-grade pipes, and the milk chocolate sallow (sic) blast with sometimes an off-color and visible fill or two made a somewhat jarring statement, as if waking up on Christmas morning and finding one had indulged in the wassail a bit too freely the night before.

2024

This year saw a return to Copper Glory with ebony, chestnut (think the Harp line), Heritage smooths, a great black sandblast and a rustication. All of these finishes and stains work exceptionally well with the copper spigot (and faux marks!) mount and traditional-color cumberland F/T stems.

This year’s was easily one of my favorites of the fifteen years of Christmas pipes, together with 2021’s Sherlock Holmes Christmas.

2025

Miss Virginia Perique, Louisiana Tobacco Queen, 1937

What?! Christmas future?  Well, we’ve done Christmas Past (1998 – 2023), Christmas Present (2024), and anyone who’s taught English or taken a writing class knows you have to observe the “Rule of 3,” so “Yes, Miss Virginia Perique, Louisiana Tobacco Queen of 1937, there is a Santa Claus and there are Irish elves in the Deansgrange factory of Dublin.” **  So here’s my Christmas wish for the 2025 pipe, a sandblast copper spigot System with ruby acrylic P-Lip:

If you want to second this motion, please leave a comment or better, fill out the Google Petition.  If we can get 10,000 signatures, we might get the attention of the United Nations. . . .

Quick Reference

Christmas  (2009–)  Annual collectible in different shapes depending on year. Original release in shape B33 only, a bent setter shape from the Rivers Collection, sterling band inscribed with fir tree. Thereafter in varying finishes and shapes including SH Collection, nickel, brass, acrylic, copper bands, navy, army or spigot (copper) mount, vulcanite or acrylic F/T stems, with presentation sleeves 2009–2017, laser-engraved on nickel bands, shank-stamped with year.

* The Peterson annual pipes include the following:

1998 – : Pipe of the Year / Limited Edition
1998 – : St. Patrick’s Day
1998 – 2004: July 4^th
2009 – : Christmas
2010 – 2014: Father’s Day
2016 – 2019: Summertime
2021 – : Carroll of Carrollton
2021 – : Halloween (preceded by the Sámhain in 2009 only)

Brandon Labudde CPG.

Matthew Ramsey CPG. Matthew sent in this wonderful Christmas story with photos: “I’ve described this as Pipe Dreams Reimagined on account of Mark’s interview with Rick Newcombe. I love the story you (re)shared in the Peterson Pipe Bible. I actually first came across it when my uncle gave me a stack of Pipes & tobaccos magazines many years back. It’s the story of Rick sharing how he serendipitously came across a treasure around the holiday season when he paid a visit to Iwan Ries back in 2004. Much to his surprise, he found what would be that year’s quintessential Christmas present–a brand new 2000 Anniversary two-pipe set with wooden stand.

Fast forward 20 years later, when I too unexpectedly came across this elusive and equally incredible set. As more on the collector-side of the moon, I was shocked to find that it was not only unsmoked, but I asked the seller if they would kindly include all ephemera (which for me, is equally important) and to my amazement, the collection arrived complete (at least, to my knowledge) with even the original cardboard factory sleeves with stickers signifying the matching numbers. Like Rick, I’ve tucked it away and look forward to opening it up on Christmas morning.

There were just too many parallels to Rick’s story that I couldn’t keep it to myself. At the end of the day, these are objects made of metal and wood and I find it best to remind myself that it’s in the sharing of stories and the connections made with other enthusiasts to this hobby that are the most enduring and rewarding. Merry Christmas, all!

Nollaig Shona Daoibh
Happy Christmas to You All!

. . . . you know, an emerald stem wouldn’t be bad, either. Maybe on a Heritage stain, like this:

**And finally, if you’ve scrolled so far, here’s something worth pondering (and I mean that in all sincerity) from the the New York newspaper The Sun, September 21, 1897: