Anchor and their external public relations teams were pretty terse on the root causes of this move, only stating that the cutting of America’s longest-running Anchor Christmas Ale was due to “time-intensive and costly brewing and packaging requirements.” Annual releases of Christmas Ale date back to 1975. Every single label since year one depicted a different hand-drawn tree, as well as a slightly different recipe every year. There isn’t another Christmas beer in America that has been released annually longer than Anchor Christmas.