For a major holiday, there have been surprisingly few animated New Year's specials. That there are far more Christmas specials is to be expected, but New Year's is also outmatched by Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentine's Day, and Easter. Of course, the fact that the day is only one week after Christmas, the must culturally dominant holiday on the calendar, doesn't help, as is the narrow window that a New Year's special could be aired is largely a prime time wasteland. The only animated New Year's special I could find produced before 1986 was Rankin/Bass's decidedly strange Rudolph's Shiny New Year from 1976, which not only imports the Christmas character for the next holiday on the calendar, but also has a mid-special tribute to the 4th of July (which may not even be in the top 10 list of bizarre things about this one).
After producing numerous holiday entries during the first decade of Peanuts specials (including one for all the above listed holidays, plus Arbor Day), the next decade saw specials that were not tied to any holiday, or even, in most cases, to any specific time of the year, with the exception of the Memorial Day special What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?. That streak ended with Happy New Year, Charlie Brown. CBS decided to sidestep the dead period between Christmas and New Year's by just scheduling it on New Year's night.
The special opens with Charlie Brown having his Christmas holidays ruined by his teacher by the announcement that the class was going to have to read Tolstoy's War and Peace over the break and write a book report on it. Given that Charlie Brown is, at most, in fourth grade, I do question the teacher's logic in assigning a complicated, 1,200+ page Russian novel to her class, particularly as the last special saw the gang struggling through writing a report on the much more kid-friendly Peter Rabbit. Also, it's odd that only Charlie Brown seems to actually be trying to read the novel, though to be fair, only Linus is depicted as his classmate (though at no point is he seen trying to read the thing, though knowing Linus, he probably had already read it).
The action glides quickly past Christmas as Charlie Brown learns that Peppermint Patty is throwing a New Year's Eve party, and refuses to acknowledge Charlie Brown's attempts to decline his invite in favor of reading. Even though he spends the special making slow progress on his reading, he still shows up for various events, usually lugging the book around with him (an amusing repeated sight gag).
While the New Year's party and Charlie Brown's assignment are both overriding arcs, the special itself is largely a series of vignettes, starting with a sequence set at a dance class where the gang (including a reluctant Charlie Brown) learn the foxtrot for the party. Meanwhile, Lucy and Linus are shocked with Rerun (in only his second appearance in a special, and first since 1976's It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown, though he had made some appearances in the recently concluded The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show) somehow keeps producing square balloons. Meanwhile, Peppermint Patty all but tells Charlie Brown she wants to be his date for the party, while he obliviously decides he's going to ask The Little Red-Haired Girl, something he actually gets the nerve to do, though not without getting his hand stuck in the mail slot in their front door.
As the big night arrives, Charlie Brown is still struggling to read his book, which he of course carts to the party. After a game of musical chairs (accompanied by a song--this is a semi-musical), Charlie Brown falls asleep before midnight, while a special guest arrives.
The voice cast is a bit more star-studded than usual, even though Fergie has departed from the role of Sally (replaced by Elizabeth Lyn Fraser in her one outing in the franchise). Charlie Brown would be voiced by Chad Allen, who had a semi-regular role on St. Elsewhere and would go on to co-star on Our House and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. This would be his only performance as Charlie Brown. Meanwhile, Linus was voiced by Jeremy Miller, who was at the time co-starring on the new hit sitcom Growing Pains. He would keep the role through 1988. Direction was shared by the franchise's two regular directors at the time, Sam Jaimes and Bill Melendez, and the special's two OK original songs "Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick", and "Musical Chairs" were written by the songwriting team of Desirée Goyette and Ed Bogas, though one wonders if they were left over from It's Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown.
Even though Happy New Year, Charlie Brown is not the most well-put-together special in the Peanuts oeuvre, it's a pretty decent one, and may in fact be the best special since She's a Good Skate, Charlie Brown, six years earlier. It would also mark the end of an era. For the last 20 years, a new Peanuts special seemed to appear like clockwork every few months, leading to 30 different ones, plus four feature films and several documentaries, some of which also incorporated original animation. After this one, however, it would be over two years before the next special, and they would start appearing far more sporadically--and for a time during the mid-90s, not even appear on TV at all. We'll cover this rather dark period next summer.
Next week: We're done for the summer, but we'll be back Memorial Day weekend 2023 as the gang sings again in Snoopy: The Musical.
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