A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

Starring: Peter Robbins and Christopher Shea
Grade: Classic

“I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?”

Relatable indeed.

Summary

Christmas time is here! After seeing all the kids ice skate, we cut to Charlie Brown (Robbins) and Linus (Shea) leaving the house with their skates, walking around for a bit, and eventually stopping to talk. Charlie Brown admits that though Christmas is just around the corner, he’s just not feeling very cheerful. He’s come to the conclusion that he may just not understand the holiday. Though he likes getting presents, sending Christmas cards, and decorating trees and all that, he’s not happy. He always ends up feeling depressed. Linus isn’t having it, pointing out how only Charlie Brown could find a way to turn such a wonderful holiday into a problem. He’s starting to agree with what Lucy has said in that, “Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest”. The two finally get to where all the kids are ice skating, and they see Snoopy (Bill Melendez) skating with everyone else. Eventually, Snoopy grabs Charlie Brown and Linus by wrapping them up in Linus’s blanket, swings them around, and sends them flying. Charlie Brown gets rocketed into the snow and flies headfirst into a tree.

As it snows, Charlie Brown checks his mailbox for a Christmas card, but there’s nothing in there. At this point, he almost wishes it weren’t the holiday season. He knows nobody likes him, so he asks himself why they have to have a holiday season to emphasize this fact. Following this, he sarcastically thanks Violet for sending him a card, but she doesn’t get it and ensures she didn’t send him one. He walks by Pig-Pen (Geoffrey Orstein) and the snowman he built and notices how the snowman has the same dirty complexion as his trashy friend. Once Pig-Pen continues to pack some snow into it, Charlie Brown gives him credit for being able to conjure up a cloud of dust in a snowstorm. Next, Charlie Brown walks by Snoopy who is sitting on his doghouse and reading the newspaper while eating a pile of full-sized bones like they are popcorn. Elsewhere, Patty (Karen Mendelson), Linus, Lucy (Tracy Stratford), and Schroeder (Chris Doran) try to catch snowflakes on their tongue. Linus tries it but thinks it needs sugar. Lucy refuses on account of it being too early, as she waits for the snowfall in January, as if that makes a difference. Charlie Brown shows up, and they all take turns throwing snowballs at a tomato can placed on a fence. All of them are wildly off despite not being very far from the fence, which doesn’t bode well for their baseball season in the spring. Finally, Linus puts a snowball in his blanket and uses it like a whip to smack the can off the fence. He walks off triumphantly, prompting Lucy to ask what he’s going to do when he’s older and can’t use his blanket anymore. Confidently, Linus suggests he will turn it into a sport coat. Charlie Brown leaves them to sit down at Lucy’s five cent psychiatric booth, so she goes over to play doctor. Charlie Brown tries to get into it right away, but Lucy demands her payment in advance. Once he gives her the nickel, she happily talks about the money for a bit before allowing him to talk.

He says he feels depressed. He knows he should be happy, but he’s not. Reminding him of a TV program, she explains that since he realizes he does need help, he’s not too far gone. Her first idea is to pinpoint his fears to label it. She rattles off several questions to try and figure out if he has a phobia of some kind mentioning the fear of responsibility, cats, staircases, the ocean, and crossing bridges. When they land on pantophobia, the fear of everything, Charlie Brown realizes this is the one. For the record, he did say “sort of” when cats were mentioned, which was interesting. Anyway, after he screams that this is it and she falls back into the snow, he still thinks his trouble is Christmas in general. He doesn’t understand it. Instead of feeling happy, he feels let down. Lucy thinks he needs involvement and comes up with the idea of him getting involved in a Christmas project. With this, she asks him to be the director of their Christmas play. Excited at the possibility, he almost can’t believe it, but Lucy sees it as the perfect solution to both of their problems. They already have a shepherd, musician, animals, and everyone else you could need including a “Christmas Queen”, which is Lucy herself. Charlie Brown isn’t sure about this because he doesn’t know anything about directing a Christmas play, but Lucy assures him she will be there to help him and will meet him at the auditorium. As the two walk, Lucy admits she can relate to Charlie Brown’s Christmas depression because it happens to her every year since she never gets what she wants. She always gets toys, a bicycle, or clothes or something, but she doesn’t want any of that stuff. What does she want, you ask?

“Real estate”.

This girl has a future.

Just then, Snoopy walks by with a box of decorations and starts decorating his doghouse. Charlie Brown asks what’s going on, so Snoopy gives him a newspaper detailing a neighborhood lights-and-display contest with a money prize to find the “true meaning of Christmas”. Seeing this as commercialized bullshit, Charlie Brown throws the paper in disgust, as he can’t believe that his own dog has gone commercial. Continuing his walk, Sally (Kathy Steinberg) finds him because she’s been looking for Charlie Brown to write a letter to Santa Claus for her. Though he doesn’t have time because he has to get to the auditorium for the play, she hands him a clipboard and pen and wants him to write what she says. Within the letter, she asks how Santa’s summer has been, how his wife is, how she’s been extra good this year, and that since she’s been so good, she has a long list of presents she wants. As she states this part, Charlie Brown is already annoyed. Continuing, Sally talks about how she wants Santa to send as many as possible. If things get too complicated, she encourages Santa to just send money. When she specifically mentions $10s and $20s, Charlie Brown flips and throws the clipboard and pen back to her before leaving. Sally is confused because all she wants is what she has coming to her (“All I want is my fair share”). On the auditorium stage, the whole Peanuts gang is playing music and dancing until Lucy stops them to say their director will be there any moment to start rehearsal. Though when she says it’s Charlie Brown, Patty and Violet are pissed. Violet thinks they’re doomed, and Patty is sure this will be the worst Christmas play ever. Once Sally announces Charlie Brown’s arrival, they all clap for him. There is one noticeable, elongated boo, but it just ends up being Snoopy. When the annoyed Charlie Brown stares at him, he stops.

Moving things along, Charlie Brown gets down to business, as they don’t have a lot of time to put this play together. He urges them to listen to him as the director and gives them basic hand signals to notate how he wants his actors to move on stage or say certain lines. Unfortunately, during his speech, all the kids stop listening and go back to playing music and dancing. It goes on for quite a bit until Charlie Brown yells at them all to stop. Next, he has Lucy pass out the costumes and scripts. With this, they will learn who they are playing as well. Frieda (Ann Altieri) is the innkeeper’s wife, Pig-Pen is the innkeeper, Shermy (Chris Doran) is the shepherd (which he’s not happy with because he always ends up being a shepherd), and Snoopy is all the animals. To make sure he has the range to pull it off, Lucy tests Snoopy on if he can imitate a sheep, cow, and a penguin. He passes with flying colors. Right after, he perches himself on Lucy’s head and it pisses her off, so she starts yelling at everyone. As this happens, Snoopy imitates her too. When she notices, she tries to punch him, but he ducks and then licks her face. Because of this, Lucy runs around in a panic, as she’s disgusted from the dog germs. Charlie Brown gets her back on track to hand out the scripts. So, she goes over to Linus and hands him a script while telling him to ditch the blanket. Linus is positive he won’t be able to memorize his lines, but she threatens to kick his ass if he doesn’t, so he relents. Again, she criticizes his blanket, but he puts it over his head to look like a shepherd, so she leaves instead of hitting him. Charlie Brown gets everyone in their places for a scene and asks Schroeder to set the mood for the first scene. Immediately, he starts playing the famous “Linus and Lucy” tune, but Charlie Brown shuts it down. Pivoting, he decides to go over the last scene with Frieda and Pig-Pen.

Frieda can’t, pointing to the fact that Pig-Pen’s dust cloud is taking the curl out of her naturally curly hair. Charlie Brown tries to make sense of it by suggesting she think of the dust as soil from a past civilization like ancient Babylon. Maybe she’s carrying soil that was tread upon by Solomon or even Nebuchadnezzar. Pig-Pen likes it and suggests that Frieda treat him with more respect, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She calls him an absolute mess and gives him a mirror to look at himself. Turning things around, Pig-Pen confidently tells her he didn’t know he looked that good. Charlie Brown calls Sally over to play Linus’s wife, and Linus is now annoyed. Lucy calls for a lunch break, with Snoopy showing off his empty dog bowl. However, Charlie Brown shuts this down as well. Lucy starts asking about her role as the Christmas Queen and then goes on a rant once Charlie Brown doesn’t immediately agree with her that she’s beautiful. Once she storms off, Charlie Brown tries to take it from the top with everyone, but they go right back to playing the “Linus and Lucy” tune and dance around. Lucy dances alongside Charlie Brown and talks about how great the play is, prompting him to snap and yell at everyone again to stop. He wants cooperation. Lucy tells Charlie Brown to face that fact that Christmas is a big commercial racket “run by a big Eastern syndicate”, but he insists this play will not be commercial. He wants the proper mood. They need a Christmas tree! Lucy agrees. She likes the idea of a big, shiny, aluminum Christmas tree. She sends Charlie Brown to get the tree, and she will occupy the others in the meantime. Taking Linus with him, Charlie Brown happily exits to go get the tree, telling the others to practice their lines while he is gone.

Before Charlie Brown and Linus go, Lucy tells him to get the biggest aluminum tree he can find and to maybe even paint it pink. Patty piles on by telling him to “do something right for a change Charlie Brown”.

Something tells me that our favorite balding child is going to screw this up too.

My Thoughts:

A Charlie Brown Christmas is known as the Christmas special, the premier example of what a holiday-focused program should be and ended up being a trendsetter in that regard. With Charles M. Schulz’s first foray into television in bringing his famed Peanuts comic strip to life, he managed to pull off two career-defining achievements simultaneously. Per the result of this impactful 25-minute program, he helped indirectly change television programming around the holiday season forever and maximized his earnings by making an emphatic transition into television and eventually film to turn Peanuts into a globally beloved multimedia franchise. This was how pivotal this special was to the entertainment industry and will without a doubt be remembered for a lifetime because of its contributions to television and the holiday itself. A staple to Christmas as much as Santa Claus himself, A Charlie Brown Christmas will always hold a place in our hearts as it’s spirit, contemporary themes, and writing are unmatched, proving above all else that less can be so much more.

Charlie Brown has endeared himself to millions of fans over the years for a lot of reasons, but his most relatable attribute is his identity as a depressed and perpetually down-on-his-luck child looking (and usually failing) to achieve happiness. Now, it’s Christmas time, a holiday perceived to be the happiest and most fulfilling of the calendar year. It’s a period where everyone comes together in celebration, hearts are automatically warmed by the aura of the holiday, and the idea of gift-giving and gift-getting come together hand-in-hand to ensure everyone walks out feeling thankful and loved. Despite this idea, there are still a large group of us that can’t just waltz through it all acting as if everything is okay. It might not be anything specific, but melancholic feelings of loneliness, depression, and undefinable reasons of sadness persist. For a lot of us, it just happens around the holiday season, and we try to ignore it to join in on the fun but end up suffering in silence once the festivities are over with. When we are supposed to be happy, we just aren’t and can’t explain why. What is missing? Exemplified by Vince Guaraldi’s somber jazz score that celebrates the holiday while also symbolizing Charlie Brown’s downed response to the festive proceedings, Charlie Brown tries everything he can to overcome his seasonal depression by engaging in what he perceives to be the holiday spirit. What’s special about our protagonist is that though he is looked at as the odd man out, he really is the only one that gets it or at least knows there is more to Christmas than what the media has turned it into. All of the other characters that Charlie Brown crosses paths with are all happy on a one-dimensional level. They don’t necessarily support the commercialization of the holiday, but it’s because they don’t really care and like what they get. They are cool with the Christmas-related activities and they’re all about getting specifically what they want for presents.

The play they put on about the meaning of Christmas doesn’t mean anything to them, as evidenced by all of their screwing around in rehearsals. They do what is expected of them during the lead-up to December’s most important day, but nobody looks any deeper into what the holiday is really about. Charlie Brown is an outlier because he is the one who is trying to find the actual meaning, not only to his own depressive state but the holiday in general. From the beginning, he’s disgusted by the commercialization of Christmas and sees through it when no one else his age can. He’s tired of it, but no one else can engage with him on this level, and he feels lonely and exhausted because of it, stuck with his own thoughts and personal misery. Even Linus is of no help. Though he reveals his connection to the holiday later on with his iconic reading from the annunciation to the shepherds straight from the Bible, he is a middleman that can also appreciate both sides of the coin, reminding Charlie Brown in the opening that he’s a downer. The only help Charlie Brown gets is paying Lucy for her advice. Though her suggestion of Charlie Brown directing the Christmas play to be more involved with the holiday is a good one, nobody giving a flying fuck about the play, its content, or him as the director and it sours him on things even more. Being the immature kids they are, they are blinded by the fluff about what Christmas has turned into, being a direct reflection of Christmas in real-life. A consistent problem that has been highlighted from generation to generation has been the glorifying of all the wrong things during the holiday season. It’s all about the gifts, the food, the partying, and whatever else. A Charlie Brown Christmas is one of those specials that emphasizes that along the way, we have become lost on the true meaning. It’s not about the decorations and the presents. The biblical background regarding Christ’s birth seems to be thrown to the wayside for more marketable things that all kids can enjoy, but A Charlie Brown Christmas boldly draws a line in the sand, fearlessly pushing to center the entire special around the true meaning of Christmas while subtly lambasting what it has turned into for the masses.

With this, we get one of the most iconic line readings in the history of the franchise. After Charlie Brown comes to a fork in the road after being criticized for his tree that meant a lot to him, he doesn’t know what to do and wonders if anyone knows what Christmas is all about. Calm and confident, Linus confirms his knowledge on the subject, goes to center stage, the lights dim, and the spotlight is on him. On one side of him, there is Charlie Brown. On the other side of Linus is the rest of the kids. Seeing enough of the mess this has turned out to be, Linus quotes the passage from Luke 2 verbatim, and he’s met with pure silence as they hang on to everything he says, with only an echo following his words in the auditorium. In that moment, time stood still. That‘s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown. Revealing religious messaging is not something widely practiced because studios and networks are aware of the controversy surrounding religious topics for mainstream audiences and have always been worried about how the responses could affect the success of something like this. It was even discussed with Charles M. Schulz himself and he apparently remarked, “If we don’t do it, who will?”. In refusing to take it out, he created a special moment in television history. Even for those who may not be particularly religious, it’s still a remarkable moment that makes the special what it is. Truthfully, we wouldn’t have it any other way, and we can’t help but feel the warmth of voice actor Christopher Shea’s words in that moment. Seeing Charlie Brown smiling and grabbing the tree to leave and do his own thing, with the others following, echoes how the animated special has resonated with everyone who has crossed paths with it. Peanuts has never been known for being laugh-out-loud hilarious (though it’s funny), being crazily animated (though it’s memorable), or having an over-the-top imagination in its story. The reason it has been able to live on is because its simplicity in its style, its authentic approach, it’s care to its characters, its refusal to dumb down jokes or statements, it’s intelligent humor for its age group, and the love that surrounds it all.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is an example of exactly what a Peanuts special should be. It’s an example of what Peanuts IS.

Despite being an animated children’s program, there is a level of sophistication and meaning behind the writing of this special which is why it has become a staple of the holiday, a testament to creator Charles M. Schulz’s writing and general care of what he’s talking about through his beloved characters. To prove a point, Charlie Brown walks through the Christmas tree lot with Linus and bypasses all of these brightly colored aluminum trees to find the diminutive tree that the franchise made an iconic symbol of the holiday. It’s a statement, another defining moment of the special, and it can be felt as early as a moment as small as Linus knocking on one of the aluminum trees to hear the loud metallic sound coming from it to illustrate how uninviting and cold the marketing of such an important holiday has become. Charlie Brown finding this paltry, leaf-lacking, branch-showing tree that would look better as a table ornament rather than a Christmas tree in the center of a living room, is a representative of what Christmas is all about. There is a beauty in the tree’s simplicity, showing how important anything could be when the beholder can see the beauty within it. Again, this simplicity is crucial to making a Peanuts special align with Schulz’s comic strip work, which is why this was such a seamless adaptation. Once Charlie Brown’s eyes meet this small tree, he sees himself. He sees something that needs a little love and attention stating, “I think it needs me”. Anything can be dressed up to look pretty, and he knows that. However, the importance of this small tree is felt once he attaches this meaning to it just by picking it over all the other colorful trees that you’d expect a kid to want. Charlie Brown sees through the artificiality of everything around his chosen tree because the others blend together. It doesn’t align with the spirit of Christmas.

After a look through the lot, Charlie Brown sees this lonely wooden Christmas tree and identifies with it immediately. It’s exactly what their play needs, and it’s exactly what the other kids need to remind them that it’s not about the size or decoration of the tree. It’s about what it represents, and any type of tree can do it. Linus knows how the others will react and furthers the point of this scene by admitting, “This doesn’t seem to represent the modern spirit”. He too knows how society perceives the holiday, with the rest of the characters being an example of the commercialization that Schulz is criticizing. However, Charlie Brown doubles down as he smiles at the tree and talks about how they can decorate it and how it will be just right. This attitude doesn’t change either once he picks it up and more leaves fall off it. Charlie Brown and this little tree are one and the same. They have been disrespected by their peers, but their intentions are purer than anyone else’s. The rest of the kids just don’t get it until they are faced with it directly, as evidenced by the insults hurled towards Charlie Brown for his efforts (“Boy, are you stupid Charlie Brown”). Even Snoopy fucking laughs at him after Lucy tells Charlie Brown he has been dumb before, but this time he really did it. This combined with Linus’s climactic speech makes him realize he doesn’t need anyone to ruin his holiday, He’ll prove to them that this is a good tree to use, and he’ll celebrate the right way by himself if they want to disrespect his efforts. At first, he almost has a breakdown once the tree sags after he puts one bulb on it, but everyone starts to empathize with him. In that moment, they see the beauty he sees. They understand the error of their ways, as they follow him in the night and fix the tree up after Linus realizes that all that was needed was just a little love.

Again, the same could be said for Charlie Brown. They really are one and the same.

At the same time, there are still some great scenes that keep things amusing and light-hearted, along with some great character development moments riddled throughout. The rehearsals were great too, highlighted by a frustrated Schroeder dealing with Lucy, and their back and forth over playing “Jingle Bells” on the piano after she disrespects Beethoven. So, though I praise some of the more serious aspects of the special, there is still a lot of fun to be had.

Slower-paced but well intentioned, A Charlie Brown Christmas defines the holiday special subgenre and the Christmas spirit with entertaining and sophisticated writing for its fans and mainstream audiences, timeless music, humor, memorable characters and moments that solidify Peanuts as a franchise, love, and a certain heartwarming sweetness in its content and low-budget technical style. Yes, the commercialism of the holiday can still be fun, but don’t forget why we celebrate.

“Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!”