Months before its December 9, 1965 debut, The New York Times television reporter Val Adams called A Charlie Brown Christmas a “big gamble” that was “tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.”
It might have been a risk, but it was a wager that certainly paid off.
How and why does a nearly six decade old animated television program manage to connect with younger audiences – and still draw many of us older viewers back year after year?
One of the main reasons is that A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus and reindeer and the traditional sentimental trappings found in your typical holiday television fare.
It’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, perfectly and poignantly articulated by Linus in the climactic scene of the Peanuts’ gang’s stage performance.
In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world.
You probably know the spiritual emphasis on regular television made his collaborators nervous.
“Bill said, ‘You can’t put the Bible on television,’” his widow Jean remembered. “And Sparky’s (Schulz’s nickname) answer was: ‘If we don’t, who will?’ Lee said that Sparky then got up and walked out of the room, and he and Bill just sat there, saying ‘What do you think that means?’”
What it meant was Charles Schulz was willing to walk away from the television deal if producers insisted on cutting out the true meaning of Christmas.
It’s ironic but true that Linus van Pelt’s recitation is often the first sacred words of Scripture that some children ever hear.
We read in Isaiah, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them” (11:6).
One of the great charms of A Charlie Brown Christmas is that most of the voices you hear are from everyday kids who lived in Schulz’s neighborhood. In fact, Christopher Shea, who voiced Linus and delivered those meaningful verses from the Gospel of Luke, couldn’t even read. Shea had the lines read to him one sentence at a time – and he then recited them back for the production.
Another draw of the special is its simplicity, a far cry from the fast moving, hyped-up animated shows of today. The comfortable pace was something that worried its producers, who feared they had a flop on their hands. Concerned the children’s dialog was too slow, some jazz music was added to add more energy – but they held their collective breath when it first aired.
Over 15 million households tuned in on the night of December 9th, a ratings bonanza that led to CBS agreeing to re-air it the next Christmas. They also ordered four more Peanuts’ specials.
The Christmas “spectacular,” as one-off specials were referred to back then, was on its way to becoming an enduring classic. A Charlie Brown Christmas won both an Emmy and Peabody in 1966 – and has never been off the air since.
Charles Schulz’s bold and principled management is instructive and inspirational. It reminds us that the experts are often wrong. It also highlights the fact that faith in Jesus is enduring, courage is rewarding, childhood innocence is worth promoting, and the true meaning of Christmas is always something we should be celebrating each December.
That Jesus sent his only son to earth in the form of an innocent baby to live among us, suffer, die, and rise again to save us from our sins?
Linus was right: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
Image credit: ABC
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