On October 2, 1950, a new comic strip about a handful of kids and a dog, drawn and written by a 27-year-old from St. Paul, Minnesota, debuted in 7 papers across the country. By the time the strip ended its run nearly 50 years later, with the last strip running the day after Charles Schultz's death, Peanuts had become by far the most popular and influential comic strip in history, with its impact being felt far from the funny pages. There were books, toys, clothing, posters, furniture, and other assorted merchandise bearing the likeness of the strip's characters. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, et al. had been employed to promote everything from snacks to cars to life insurance. To date, the strip has been adapted into five different feature films, at least six different TV series, two off-Broadway musicals, and 45 stand-alone narrative specials.
Its the latter that will be the focus of this column. For the next 15 weeks, I'll be watching and discussing one Peanuts special a week, going in chronological order. Next summer, I'll tackle specials 16-30, and the summer of 2023, I'll write up the last 15, ending with 2011's Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown. But for now, we're going all the way to the beginning of the Peanuts gang's TV legacy, with the one that started it all.
In April 1965, Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, and Schroder appeared on the cover of Time, in what would, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, turn out to be one of the most influential covers in the magazine's storied history. The cover would prompt Coca-Cola to offer to sponsor a Peanuts Christmas special. Of course the problem was that it was already May, and the soda company wanted the special by that December.
Luckily Schultz, along with producer Lee Mendelson was quickly able to come up with a plot, and the duo and director Bill Melendez were able to get a script written within a few weeks. The 25-minute special, which was already low-budget, cost $20,000 extra, and all involved thought it was going to be a disaster. Instead, it got rave reviews, was the second-most-watched program the week it premiered, and won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program.
The plot is pretty simple. Charlie Brown, as is his wont, is depressed by all the commercialism of Christmas. Lucy, in an effort to cheer him up, puts him in charge of the Christmas pageant. After the cast makes it clear they'd rather dance then rehearse, Lucy sends him out to get a tree. When he returns with what everyone else thinks is a pitiful choice, Linus recites the Christmas story from the Book of Luke, Charlie Brown (briefly) cheers up, and the gang rallies around the tree.
One of the charms of the special is its simplicity. The animation is nothing spectacular (the kids danced like they did in that famous sequence because it was easier to give each kid a couple of simple move repeated over and over), the sound and music cues are occasionally ragged, the mostly amateur kids voicing most of the characters delivered their lines rather flatly (the kid actors voicing the three main human characters, Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy, were professionals), but it all somehow works.
Schultz was wise to largely keep contemporary references out of the story, with only two exceptions: the "Real In" sign on Lucy's psychiatrist stand, and her desire for a big, aluminum Christmas tree. Aluminum trees, in a variety of colors, were all the rage of the early-to-mid 60s, though they very quickly fell out of style (some credit this special itself in killing them off, though it's likely that the fad would have run its course regardless). While my family has always used artificial trees, they were always realistic-looking artificial trees, and growing up, I couldn't fathom why anyone would want a pink metal tree. To be honest, I still can't.
The success of A Charlie Brown Christmas, at least in 1965, shouldn't have been a surprise--after all, the strip was hugely popular at the time. But there's no reason to have expected it to endure for more than a half-century now. Indeed, when Apple bought the exclusive rights to the special and several others for their streaming platform last fall, there was a huge outcry that essentially forced the biggest company in the world to strike a deal with PBS to air the special, so that its run of being seen annual broadcast TV every year wouldn't be interrupted (this despite the fact that the special is also widely available on DVD and is pretty easy to find online if you know where to look). Odds are that, in 2065, on whatever device people use to watch TV then, A Charlie Brown Christmas will still be a holiday staple.
Next week: Charlie Brown plays baseball for the first time in a special in Charlie Brown's All-Stars.
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