Christmas Carolers painting preliminary

This piece began life as the preliminary Carl Barks created to adapt his own cover for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #148 (from 1953) for an issue of Walt Disney's Christmas Parade. Issue #9 in 1972 was the last issue of that title, so this Barks redux was never needed. Instead he finished it as "CB Oil 20" (aka "Barks Code 72-05") titled "Christmas Carolers". You can see on this original preliminary that it has the trade dressing for the Christmas Parade title. Created in graphite on 12" x 17" onionskin paper.

Geoff Blum wrote a very good article about this painting for Egmont's Carl Barks Collection, in Finnish it was in "Carl Barksin maalaukset ja piirrokset", please see page 72.
https://inducks.org/issue.php?c=fi%2FCBM2013#p072a
And this is how Geoff wrote:
"In October 1971 editor Chase Craig commissioned a duck painting to grace the cover of one of Western Publishing’s holiday comics. Hoping to come up with an impressive new layout, Barks worried over the idea for several months, until Craig put his foot down and selected an existing cover from 1953 that the artist had drawn but not invented (WDC 148). “I think it is a real cute idea and it is the idea I would like you to work up,” he wrote. “I am sending you here a large drawing blowup in pencil line ... keep these exact same proportions and scale of things. if you work this size, be sure to allow a 3⁄4" bleed around the entire art area.... do not change the overall figure positioning, window layout, etc.” (Chase Craig, letter to Barks, January 18, 1972)

We need to remember also this is his 2nd last cover Barks made for his long-time publisher. Later he pencilled a cover for WDC 405 (1974), and which Garé inked.
However, this recreacration of WDC 148 cover takes me back into Barks' golden period, and covers surviving from that era are super rare, and pretty expensive too.

Barks' bookkeeping presents that he sold the oilpainting and this preliminary for Western Publishing at $200 back then in 1972.
Seeing Pluto in Barks' covers is also a very rare occasion ;-) Those anecdotes you can check from here:
https://www.cbarks.dk/THEPLUTOPAINTING.htm

There is one thing nobody asked from Barks... Was that "Silent Night" text in the artwork Barks' joke / reminder for Graig about the censored Silent Night story? ;-)

... and one more anecdote: first time this painting was published in 1983 as the cover, as it was planned. That happened in Finland.
https://inducks.org/story.php?c=CB+OIL++20
This issue was never for sale, but it was sent as a subscription gift. So, then in every comic book was glued the address sticker in the back cover. But not in the copy I am having, it is without it! I guess this issue is from the publisher's archive, I bought this a few years ago and sent it later for grading. With an address sticker it would get a green info label from CGC.