A Charlie Brown Christmas

I watched this on Saturday…gearing up for Christmas…it’s not Christmas without The Peanuts and watching them all dance to “Linus and Lucy.”

The Peanuts were my favorite cartoon growing up and I would never miss their Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas specials. Everyone can relate to Charlie Brown because we all lose more than we win in life. He doesn’t get to kick that football, his dog has more things than he does, and he is forever trying to get the elusive little redhead girl to notice him.

The Peanuts inhabit a kids world where grownups are felt but not heard. At least not in English. I’ve said this before but… Charlie Brown, one day when you grow up… I hope you end up with the little red head girl that you like so much and win just for once…for all of us.

Little Red-Haired Girl | Charlie brown characters, Charlie brown and snoopy, Charlie brown cartoon

This 1965 special has everything good about them in one show.

The gang is skating and Charlie Brown is telling Linus that despite Christmas being a happy time he is depressed. Linus tells Charlie that is normal and Lucy pipes in with “Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest.” That sums it all up.

Charlie gets to direct the Christmas play and his main job was to get a spectacular Christmas tree under Lucy’s orders. …He picks the only real tree there…more like a branch but he is sure it will do the job. Most of the gang do not agree when he comes back with the tree but Charlie persists. Linus gets up and reads from the Bible and the inflection he lends to the reading is great.

After that, you will need to watch because it will be worth it.

Aluminum Christmas trees were marketed beginning in 1958 and enjoyed fairly strong sales by eliminating pesky needles and tree sap. But the annual airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas swayed public thinking: In the special, Charlie Brown refuses to get a fake tree. Viewers began to do the same, and the product was virtually phased out by 1969. The leftovers are now collector’s items.

Actors and Actresses The early Peanuts specials made use of both untrained kids and professional actors: Peter Robbins (Charlie Brown) and Christopher Shea (Linus) were working child performers, while the rest of the cast consisted of “regular” kids coached by Melendez in the studio. When Schulz told Melendez that Snoopy couldn’t have any lines in the show—he’s a dog, and Schulz’s dogs didn’t talk—the animator decided to bark and chuff into a microphone himself, then speed up the recording to give it a more emotive quality.

Love the Christmas Dance.

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

36 thoughts on “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

    1. I love the Peanuts…my wife and I collected a bunch of stuff from the 60s and 70s by them in toys and products. Merry Christmas to you also…again sorry for the late reply!

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  3. I stole so many lines from this for use on my radio show. I used a line from Sally in one of my sweepers that played between songs. “It’s Christmas time with Keith Allen ‘(Sally) Would you please write a letter to Santa Claus for me?’ on B-95” (then a Christmas song followed, usually).

    I loved how you can tell that line was pieces together from a few takes. That’s what makes it so funny to me

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  5. I remember the first time I saw this (which was the first time it aired) and being transfixed by it. I sat there and watched these characters I had only seen on paper suddenly come to life. It was magic. And, of course, the music…

    Did you ever hear Los Straitjackets do “Linus And Lucy”?

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    1. Love that John! Love those guitars…at first I thought that one guy on the right was playing a Fender Jaguar but that wasn’t it…they pulled it off which is impressive without piano…that is one I’ve never tried.

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  7. Love it! A part of my essential ‘to do’ list for Christmas and I think it has been for about 50 years. Already watched it a couple of weeks back but might slip it in once more. A great story for kids and adults and that music is so cool by itself.
    As I type this, i’m wearing a Snoopy watch! I’m not obsessed with Peanuts by any means but I was given it and I like it so I wear it frequently.

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    1. I watched it Saturday and it was great. I have a few Snoopy watches… my favorite was a yellow and green one with him holding a tennis racket…but we have many.

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  13. I was a teenager in high school when this hit TV, but I loved it, and still do, now that I am way past a teen. In 1960, my folks purchased the aluminum tree with the rotating wheel. My sister and me would sit in our living room for hours watching the tree change colors. Who needed pot when you had a color changing tree. Right? Later in the mid 60s, I used the color wheel as our rock bands first light show. The crowd didn’t get my inventiveness, so we made a homemade strobe light out of a cardboard box, a 100 watt bulb and an electric motor turning a cardboard disk. My son has an old aluminum tree and wheel that he uses every Christmas, but then, he was born a few decades too late. Vince Geraldi was the perfect choice for the show. That song always puts a smile on my face.

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    1. I think the Christmas wheel was a good idea. Those strobe lights get to me…we tried that and I couldn’t play worth crap until I closed my eyes through most of it.
      My son likes the older stuff also…older than me. He likes the beatnik clothes from the 50s.

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      1. Yeah, the strobe light messed with me too. We kept the color wheel for a few years. I had a cousin that was a Beatnik. She worked at The Cellar in Fort Worth around 1958-59, dressed like the ones you see on TV.

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      2. He loves that stuff and just shirts from the 40s along with it. He has an old soul.
        Phil…fair or not but I always think of Maynard G Krebs before he was Gilligan.

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      3. Maynard was the original Beatnik, at least on TV. I loved that stupid show and watched it because of him. Gilligan…well he was sort of cool, but not like Krebbs. My cousin looked a lot like Zelda. I wrote about her in “A Performance To Remember” a few years ago.

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      4. Of course I’ve watched Gilligan more but I do like Dobie Gillis…it had to be very strange at the time. It’s amazing that it lasted 4 seasons.
        I like Zelda!

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