A Charlie Brown Christmas

From a very early age I was a fan of the Peanuts comic strip. For Birthdays and Christmas, or whenever I had some extra money, I would often pick up Peanuts books (which I still have today). I've seen a number of those books, in worse condition than the ones I have, at the Charles M. Schulz museum in Santa Rosa, CA. I'd almost like to loan them mine so they'd have decent copies on display.

Tonight on ABC-TV, for the 46th year in a row, A Charlie Brown Christmas will be broadcast. I remember watching the very first showing in 1965 as a 9-year old. It was the first of what would eventually become 75 TV specials. 

When you read comics you create the voices for the characters in your head. When I first saw the show I had to recalibrate those voices to match the actors on the show. Those children's voices are still there when I read a Peanuts strip today. More about those voices in a moment.

I've recently read a biography of Charles M. Schulz that I found on a discount table at the bookstore. I hadn't remembered seeing this book before, entitled Schulz and Peanuts, but I'm glad I found it. It's been a very revealing look into the life of Charles Schulz and many of the influences that found their way into his 17,000+ strips. I'd highly recommend it for anyone who is a fan of the Peanuts strip.

It's not a glossy look at Schulz' life at all, but reveals a guy who had a lot of insecurities and irrational fears that tormented him throughout his life, but also probably gave him some of the humor for which he was famous. He found the one thing in his life that he was really good at, drawing a cartoon, and did it better than anybody ever has. The Peanuts empire dwarfed anything before or since in the cartoon business. Today my daughter attends college at the school where Schulz's second wife attended and there are now many buildings named after Schulz or Peanuts characters thanks to funding from the Schulz estate.

In reading the book I came across the chapter on the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas and what all went into that. There were significant battles fought over that TV special, all of which Schulz won. The producers had never done a show like this with cartoon characters, and they tried to make it the only way they knew how - with adult actors voicing the kids parts and a laugh track. Schulz vetoed both ideas, insisting on children's voices for the kid's parts and absolutely no laugh track. He didn't think his audience would need to be told when to laugh, and he was right.

The other big battle involved the inclusion of the Biblical Christmas story from Luke as recited by Linus in the scene you'll see below. At one point as the producers were trying to talk Schulz out of including the Bible passage he said "if we don't do it, who will?" Good question. Schulz insisted the passage be kept in the show and the rest is history. Here it is:

Another issue with the show that I found interesting was that Schulz hated jazz. All his adult life he had been a fan of classical music, building up quite a collection of classical albums. When a jazz theme used on a previous show about Schulz called A Boy Named Charlie Brown was proposed for the Christmas show he wasn't sure he'd like it, but the song Linus and Lucy, as performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, became the theme song for Peanuts and today is considered a classic Christmas song by many. The L.A. radio station that plays all Christmas music this time of year includes that song in their rotation. You can hear part of it in this clip of the Christmas dance from the show:

Just to show how out-of-touch the TV types at that time were, a few days before it first aired a preview was shown to the sponsors at Coca-Cola who had fronted the money to make the special. They were underwhelmed to say the least. They thought the show was too slow, and the lack of a laugh track along with kid's voices in all the acting parts made them think the show would be unsuccessful. There were also various technical glitches that were never fixed due to the small budget they were working with. Charles Schulz would never let them fix those glitches in ensuing years.

The night the show aired, December 9, 1965, fully half of the TVs on that night were tuned in. It was a huge commercial and artistic success.

I still have in my files the final Sunday Peanuts strip which ran the morning of February 13, 2000, a few hours after Schulz died. I remember hearing the news on the radio that he had died as I was driving to a concert that morning. It still makes me a little sad to think about it.

I'll be at a rehearsal tonight when the show airs, but I'm planning to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas via DVR in the next few days.  Wouldn't be Christmas without it.