I think everyone’s familiar with the ‘A Very Special Christmas’ compilation put out in 1987 to support the Special Olympics. Keith Haring’s cover went on to iconic status (There’s even a copy at the Museum of Modern Art). Well I’m sure considerably less remember the CD Longbox version which was a separate and distinct version of the nativity, also by Haring. I certainly didn’t remember seeing it, and so when an unopened copy came up on Ebay, I had to snatch it up and add it to my ever-growing museum of Christmas oddities. I was always a huge fan of Haring’s and even got a chance to visit the Pop Shop back in the day. It will give me great pride to get this longbox framed and hanging on the wall!

I thought it was kind of important to get this version out there too, I’ve taken great care to scan and clean up the image (it’s tough scanning metallic ink!) and uploaded high res versions. I’m sure the number of people out there who care won’t be enormous, but those who do will be pretty keen to have a good quality scan I figure. Sometimes the Internet has gaps, especially for pre-nineties things, and it’s up to us to fill them! This is too cool an image not to share!

Keith Haring A Very Special Christmas Longbox Cover

Now this has me wondering if the cassette tape version has any different artwork…? Doesn’t appear so from the Interwebs. Too bad, always cool finding new versions!