A Charlie Brown Christmas
We’ll get into some little-known facts about the cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas, which has become a bigger (and more anticipated) staple in American households at Christmas than Granny Gloria’s Jello mold, and why it disappeared from TV (the cartoon, not the Jello mold)…
It Ain’t Disney
Charles Schulz, Peanuts’ creator, didn’t really care to use his characters for advertising, but eventually came around when Ford approached him. Schulz was a dedicated Ford man, and he finally gave his approval. The commercials for the Ford Falcon can be seen here!
It was simply animated, even for its time. Disney was producing masterpieces such as Sleeping Beauty around the same time in full color, using a technique called multiplaning.
The primitive style matched the characters and the comic strip was a success and opened the door for the Christmas special.
Children Led Them
The voices were done by actual children. Real, everyday children. The leads were professional child actors, but the rest? Not children coached to be overly precocious by stage mothers, not slick, career adult voiceover actors that were then paid to interpret what they thought a child would sound like(as most cartoons do today)-actual children. Children were quickly pulled from the director’s neighborhood. Some couldn’t even read and were taught lines phonetically. I think that’s why, as children, we loved it. That’s why, as adults, we still love it. As children, those characters were us and our friends. They sounded like us-not Hollywood’s cleaned-up and perfectly enunciated version of us. As adults, we not just see, but hear ourselves as innocent children again when we watch. We remember sitting on a cozy couch, lights dimmed, the promise of Christmas morning’s magic only a few days away. We get to return to a time and a season where there really was warmth and goodwill. A simple sweetness we long for, even if we won’t always admit it.
Who Has Four Thumbs and Hates Jazz?
Me And Charles Schulz
Schulz hated jazz, but put his feelings aside and left the decision for the soundtrack to the producers. And thank goodness for that. Vince Guaraldi’s score is right up there with John Williams’s score for…okay. John Williams has done a lot of popular scores. Just pick your favorite and run with it.
Putting Cola in Your Peanuts
The original A Charlie Brown Christmas Special actually had product placements for Coca-Cola in a couple of spots.
This was because they paid, in part, to get the cartoon made. But they did it in a less than enthusiastic way, really. All told, the budget was just shy of $80,000.00. It’s less than $1,000,000.00, adjusted for inflation, if it were made today. Most largely forgotten, crap TV shows cost that much per episode or two to make. The licensing eventually ran out, and the placements were removed. So now I guess that makes them un-cola ‘nuts. I header-ed and ended with a couple of IYKYK switcheroos there.
Schulz Stands Up To (and walks out on) CBS
CBS wanted two things:
- A laugh track, because they thought the show ambled a bit much. They figured that the laugh track would herd the viewer with cues to where the show was going. Charles ambled right out of the meeting and stayed away for a bit. CBS got the message, and the laugh track was nixed(Dumbasses did the same thing a decade later with M*A*S*H, though).
- To remove the religious element. First of all…whut? Schulz was a religious man. Did the CBS higher-ups not read the strip? Christmas is a religious holiday-a celebration of the birth of Christ. Right there in the name of the holiday. The passage from Luke that Linus monologues is the “Aha!” moment for Charlie Brown, the moment of calm, reflection, and realization. A moment so profound that Linus doesn’t need his security blanket; it symbolically gets discarded on the stage floor. The thing that allows Charlie to stop stressing about everything. What on earth were the CBS yahoos going to replace this with? Lights, please:
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.”
A Charlie Brown Christmas Special is for everyone, regardless of how you choose to worship. Who doesn’t need to be reminded that we should slow down, root for the little guy, and spread goodwill to each other once in a while?
Plus, the Peanut Gang’s smooth dance moves are off the chain.
The cartoon’s debut drew in 50 shares of TV viewers, meaning that one-half of any household that owned a television tuned in. It made CBS happy (made their money), and it has remained a household favorite for many since 1965.
Do I Have to Pay for Charlie Brown?
Apple TV+ acquired the rights to A Charlie Brown Christmas in 2020; you won’t see it on CBS. If you don’t have it on physical media, you usually have to pay to watch it.
But here’s how anyone can watch it for free:
Non-subscribers can watch A Charlie Brown Christmas Special for free from Dec. 22-25 by going to tv.apple.com!
Want to watch a Christmas show you’ve never seen before? We’ve got recommendations for that, too.
If you can’t get Apple TV+, A Charlie Brown Christmas is still available on DVD!
