Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on December 25, 2009

May you have a wondrous day of love and hope, one of peace and joy, one of promise and reconnection. Bless you on this Christmas Day, a day of celebration of the birth of the Savior, Jesus Christ.

My favorite scene from the 1965 classic holiday animation, A Charlie Brown Christmas… Linus reminds us of what Christmas is all about.

Linus Explains What Christmas Is About | A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965)

A Charlie Brown Christmas / Peanuts trivia, courtesy of IMDb.com and Infoplease.com:

• This was the first animated Peanuts special.
• It was the first of nearly 50 Peanuts television movies, A Charlie Brown Christmas is the longest-running cartoon special in history, airing every year since its debut in 1965. Whimsical, melancholy, and ultimately full of wonder, it is a holiday favorite for countless families. But this cartoon classic almost didn’t make it on the air.
• Creator of the popular Peanuts comic strip, Charles M. Schulz wanted A Charlie Brown Christmas to have the religious meaning that was central to his own experience of Christmas. And though the TV special was made in California, Schulz wanted it to include snowy scenes that recalled his native Midwest.
• When they first saw the show, CBS executives hated it. They were horrified at the idea of an animated Christmas special with such a blatant religious and anti-commercial message. They also strongly objected to the fact that the show had no canned laughter.
• The Christmas special was also criticized by the CBS executives for featuring contemporary jazz, an offbeat choice for a cartoon. The music was provided by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.
• The 1960s saw Guaraldi leading his own jazz groups. His breakthrough album Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (1962) featured the Emmy-winning tune “Cast Your Fate to the Wind.” Two years later Guaraldi made history with his A Boy Named Charlie Brown, which defined the Peanuts sound and introduced a generation of children to modern jazz; the following year, he did the same for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Guaraldi also wrote an acclaimed 1965 jazz work for a choral Eucharist at San Francisco’s famed Grace cathedral. Guaraldi died on February 6, 1976.
• When viewing the rough cut of the show, both animator Bill Melendez and producer Lee Mendelson were convinced that they had a flop on their hands. After it premiered, they were happily surprised and shocked at the high ratings and excellent reviews that the show received. Today, the show remains the second longest-running Christmas special on US network television; the 1964 Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) (TV) premiered one year earlier and is still broadcast every year on US network television.
• On Thursday, December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas was seen in more than 15 million homes, capturing nearly half of the possible audience. That week it was number two in the ratings, after Bonanza. It won critical acclaim as well as an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program and a Peabody Award for excellence in programming.
• Kathy Steinberg, who provided the voice of Sally Brown, had not yet learned to read at the time of production, so she had to be fed her lines, often a word or syllable at a time, which explains the rather choppy delivery of the line, “All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.”
• During his famed speech, Linus, who is well known to be dependent on his security blanket, actually lets go of it when he recites these words: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,” which is from Luke 2:10. Linus’s full speech about the true meaning of Christmas is from the Luke 2:8-14 passage from the King James translation of the Bible.
• This animation broke many of the rules prevalent for animated holiday specials during the 1960s: it didn’t make use of a laugh track; real children were used for the character voices instead of adult actors imitating children’s voices; and Biblical references to the birth of the Christ Child were used to illustrate the true meaning of Christmas.
• The only voice provided by an adult was that of Snoopy, with Bill Melendez as the “voice” of Charlie Brown’s dog.
• Bill Melendez tried to talk Charles M. Schulz out of using Biblical references (especially Linus’s speech) in this special. Schulz reportedly won him over by saying, “If we don’t do it, who will?” As it turned out, Linus’ recitation was hailed as one of the most powerful moments in the highly acclaimed special.
• Just before her remarks about Christmas being a big commercial racket, Lucy refers to Charlie Brown simply as Charlie. This is the only time she does this in any of the TV specials: every other time, it’s Charlie Brown. The full quote is: “Look, Charlie, we all know Christmas is just a big commercial racket.”
• The original broadcast included some brief animated sections which included the logo of Coca-Cola, the show’s original sponsor. These have been edited out of subsequent broadcasts and the video release. Right after the opening title, Linus (or Charlie Brown, sources disagree) crashed into a sign advertising Coca-Cola after being tossed by Snoopy. (Look at current versions and you’ll notice that we never see where Linus lands.) The closing carol originally included the complete verse (instead of fading out) with a final on-screen “Merry Christmas from your local bottler of Coca-Cola” right after the United Feature Syndicate credit at the end.
• Patty in this Christmas special is not Patricia “Peppermint Patty” Reichardt. The latter first appeared several years later in the strip. The former was phased out gradually, disappearing completely by the end of the 1970s, despite being one of the four original Peanuts characters.
• Several minutes’ worth of footage was clipped to allow more time for commercials, though some has been restored. Until 1997, the scene in which the Peanuts gang throw snowballs at a can on a fence was missing from both broadcast and video versions. The Paramount and Warner video releases are complete and unedited.
• Charles Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip, died in his sleep on Feb. 12, 2000, after a battle with colon cancer. He was 77. Refusing to pass the torch to any other artist, he announced his retirement in December, when he was diagnosed with cancer. For years he drew with a shaky hand, the result of a series of strokes. In addition, he had lost partial sight in one eye.
• Peanuts debuted in 1950 and went on to be the most widely read comic strip in the world, with an audience of 355 million in 75 countries. It ran in 2,600 newspapers and was published in 21 languages, including Serbo-Croatian, Chinese, and Tlingit.

Additional Christmas and religious reading and listening:
On My Watch – Writings of SamHenry: Review of Christmas 2009 and Kings College Choir “DO” Christmas Unlike Any Other Choir
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Christmas Rewind: Osmond Family Christmas Shows (video)
Half-Baked Sourdough: Christmas In Wasilla 2009
Another Black Conservative: A brief word about Kwanzaa
Dancing Czars: Wow!
The Powers That Be: For Your Christmas Eve Viewing Pleasure
James Panero, Big Government: Mao and the Christmas Tree: The President’s Yuletide Jeer
VotingFemale Speaks!: Christmas Day Open Thread
Michelle Malkin: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
Gathering of Eagles: Christmas Day in Philly
Tarheeltalker: Christmas at NCIS
Nice Deb: My Favorite Christmas Carol Sung By A 7 Year Old
William Tucker, American Spectator: Christmas Melodies From Near and Far
Conservative Girl With a Voice: Merry Christmas Wish
Caffeinated Thoughts: The Wonderful Cross
Blue Crab Boulevard: Christmas Wishes
The Anchoress: Breath of Heaven – UPDATE

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