Original 1st printing 8&3/4 x 12&1/8" oversized event flyer for "A First Christmas Dinner", a free San Francisco Diggers-sponsored party/event/happening (the Diggers are not specifically mentioned, but more on that below), held at Hamilton Methodist Church in San Francisco, CA on 12/24/1966.

 

 Art by P.D. Spoecker, medium-thick flat index stock flyer (printed by the Berkeley Free Press) is in excellent (B+) condition; aside from an area of uneven toning (1" along the top edge/margin and 5/8" along the right margin are a few degrees lighter/brighter than the rest of the image), a bit of minor red ink streaking and a nearly-invisible stray handling ding/light bend or two, it is in VERY crisp/sharp shape.

 

 VERY trippy-looking late-'66 flyer from a really wild Digger-sponsored event. The specifics of the evening's "activities" are explained on page 112 of the paperback edition of Charles Perry's "The Haight-Ashbury- A History";

 

 "The first mention of their name (the Diggers) in a daily newspaper was in Ralph Gleason's column a few days later, an announcement for a "Christmas Eve for Hippies" being put on cooperatively by the Diggers and Hamilton Methodist Church and publicized through the Free Frame (*and this flyer!).

 

 "Like Thanksgiving, Christmas was a time to invite strangers to dinner, and like Thanksgiving it had its Digger Feed, only in the more comfortable confines of Hamilton Methodist. After Reverend Andrew Juvinall's sermon on "Jesus the Outcast Beatnik", with an untoward moment when an acid tripper wandered up to the altar, singing loudly but out of sync with the organ, and was kicked out, Christmas dinner was served to 500 people, with turkeys provided by the Diggers in their usual mysterious manner. The fact that it was Christmas Eve had suggested the idea of a mass acid trip, using the free LSD Owsley had been laying on the Diggers. Music was provided by a recently formed band calling itself the Chamber Orkustra, which had a reputation as the Diggers' band. The founder of the band was a brooding 19-year-old who affected a top hat and went by the name of Bobby Sonofox, or less respectfully, Bummer Bob (*Charles Manson "family" associate Bobby Beausoleil). He played electric guitar and bouzouki, and the band also included bass, drums, violin and oboe."