A Charlie Brown Christmas is a 1965 American animated television special. It is the first TV special based on the comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Schulz, and features the voices of Peter Robbins, Christopher Shea, Kathy Steinberg, Tracy Stratford, and Bill Melendez. Produced by Lee Mendelson and directed by Melendez, the program made its debut on the CBS television network on December 9, 1965, four days after it was broadcast in Canada. In the special, Charlie Brown (Robbins) finds himself depressed despite the onset of the cheerful holiday season. After Lucy Van Pelt (Stratford) suggests he direct a neighborhood Christmas play, his best efforts are ignored and mocked by his peers when he chooses a puny Christmas tree as a centerpiece.
After the comic strip's debut in 1950, Peanuts had become a worldwide phenomenon by the mid-1960s. The special was commissioned and sponsored by The Coca-Cola Company, and was written over a period of several weeks, and produced on a small budget in six months. In casting the characters, the producers took an unconventional route, hiring child actors. The program's soundtrack was similarly unorthodox, featuring a jazz score by pianist Vince Guaraldi.
Its lack of a laugh track (a staple in American television animation in this period), in addition to its tone, pacing, music, and animation, led both the producers and the network to predict the project would be a disaster. However, contrary to their collective apprehension, A Charlie Brown Christmas received high ratings and acclaim from critics. It received an Emmy and a Peabody Award, and became an annual presentation in the United States, airing on broadcast television during the Christmas season for 56 years before becoming exclusively available on Apple TV+ streaming service. Its success paved the way for a series of Peanuts television specials and films. Its jazz soundtrack achieved commercial success, selling five million copies in the US. Live theatrical versions of A Charlie Brown Christmas have been staged.
Plot
On their way to join their friends' ice skating on a frozen pond, Charlie Brown confesses to Linus Van Pelt that, despite all the things he likes about the Christmas season, he is still depressed. After Linus's reproach, and a put-down from Violet, he visits Lucy Van Pelt's psychiatric booth and tells her his problem. She suggests he direct the group's annual Christmas play to get involved, and he accepts.
Charlie Brown becomes even more discouraged by his observations of Christmas's commercialization as he heads for the rehearsal: Lucy laments over not receiving real estate for Christmas; Snoopy decorates his doghouse for a neighborhood lights and display contest; and Charlie Brown's younger sister Sally asks him to write a greedy letter to Santa Claus. At the rehearsal, Charlie Brown finds a play fit for the 1960s with dancing, lively music, an uncooperative cast, and a "Christmas Queen" (Lucy). Unable to control the cast, Charlie Brown decides the play needs a more "proper mood", and recommends a Christmas tree. Lucy suggests a big, pink aluminum Christmas tree, then sends him and Linus to get one.
At the tree lot, Charlie Brown picks the only real tree there, a small sapling. Linus questions his choice, but Charlie Brown believes that once decorated, it will be perfect. Upon their return, Lucy, Violet, Patty, and Frieda scorn him and the tree and walk away laughing. Crestfallen, Charlie Brown asks if anyone knows what Christmas is all about. Linus says he does, walks to center stage, asks for a spotlight, drops his security blanket, recites the King James Version of the annunciation to the shepherds, picks up his blanket, returns, and says, "That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."
Realizing that he does not have to let commercialism ruin his Christmas, Charlie Brown takes the tree home to decorate it and show the others that it will work in the play. The others realize they are too hard on Charlie Brown and quietly follow him after listening to Linus's speech. He stops at Snoopy's doghouse, which has won the lights and display contest, and hangs a large red ornament on his tree. The ornament's weight causes the tiny tree to bend to the ground. Believing that he killed the tree, a dejected Charlie Brown walks off.
The others arrive at Snoopy's doghouse and as they all start to see its potential, Linus gently uprights the drooping tree and wraps his blanket around its base to offer some support. After the others hand the tree a makeover using more decorations from the doghouse, even Lucy concedes to Charlie Brown's choice. The children then start humming "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Hearing them, Charlie Brown returns to see that the sapling is a fully decorated Christmas tree. All the children shout, "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!", and then sing "Hark" with Charlie Brown and Snoopy (original version only) joining in as snow begins to fall.
Cast Peter Robbins as Charlie Brown Christopher Shea as Linus Van Pelt Tracy Stratford as Lucy Van Pelt Kathy Steinberg as Sally Brown Chris Doran as Schroeder and Shermy Geoffrey Orstein as Pig-Pen Sally Dryer as Violet Ann Altieri as Frieda Bill Melendez as Snoopy Karen Mendelson as Patty Choral vocals: Members of the children's choir of St. Paul's Episcopal Church (San Rafael, California) directed by Robert "Barry" Mineah. The choir was also featured on the Vince Guaraldi recording At Grace Cathedral.
Production Development By the early 1960s, Charles M. Schulz's comic strip Peanuts had gained enormous popularity. Television producer Lee Mendelson acknowledged the strip's cultural impression and had an idea for a documentary on its success, phoning Schulz to propose the idea. Schulz, an avid baseball fan, recognized Mendelson from his documentary on ballplayer Willie Mays, A Man Named Mays, and invited him to his home in Sebastopol, California, to discuss the project. Their meeting was cordial, with the plan to produce a half-hour documentary set. Mendelson wanted to feature roughly "one or two" minutes of animation, and Schulz suggested animator Bill Melendez, with whom he collaborated some years before on a spot for the Ford Motor Company. Mendelson later stated that he was drawn to doing an animated Charlie Brown after working on A Man Named Mays, noting that Mays was arguably the best baseball player of all time, while Charlie Brown, in a running gag in the strips, was one of the worst, making him a natural follow-up subject to his previous work.
Despite the popularity of the strip and acclaim from advertisers, networks were not interested in the special. By April 1965, Time featured the Peanuts gang on its magazine cover, prompting a call from John Allen of the New York-based McCann Erickson Agency. Mendelson imagined he would sell his documentary, and blindly agreed to Allen's proposal: an animated half-hour Peanuts Christmas special. The Coca-Cola Company was looking for a special to sponsor during the holiday season. "The bad news is that today is Wednesday and they'll need an outline in Atlanta by Monday," Allen remarked to Mendelson. He quickly contacted Schulz, and the two got to work with plans for a Peanuts Christmas special. The duo prepared an outline for the Coca-Cola executives in less than one day, and Mendelson would later recall that the bulk of ideas came from Schulz, whose "ideas flowed nonstop." According to Mendelson, their pitch to Coca-Cola consisted of "winter scenes, a school play, a scene to be read from the Bible, and a sound track combining jazz and traditional music." The outline did not change over the course of its production.
As Allen was in Europe, the duo received no feedback on their pitch for several days. When Allen got in touch with them, he informed them that Coca-Cola wanted to buy the special, but also wanted it for an early December broadcast, giving the duo just six months to scramble together a team to produce the special. Mendelson assured him – without complete confidence in his statements – that this would be no problem. Following this, A Charlie Brown Christmas entered production, and was completed just ten days shy of its national broadcast premiere.
Writing
Schulz's main goal for a Peanuts-based Christmas special was to focus on the true meaning of Christmas. He desired to juxtapose this theme with interspersed shots of snow and ice-skating, perhaps inspired by his own childhood growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He also created the idea for the school play, and mixing jazz with traditional Christmas carols. Schulz was adamant about Linus's reading of the Bible, despite Mendelson and Melendez's concerns that religion was a controversial topic, especially on television. Melendez recalled Schulz turned to him and remarked, "If we don't do it, who will?" Schulz's estimation proved accurate, and in the 1960s, fewer than nine percent of television Christmas episodes contained a substantive reference to religion, according to university researcher Stephen Lind.Lind, Stephen J. "Christmas in the 1960s: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Religion, and the Conventions of the Genre" Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 26.1 (2014)
Schulz's faith in the Bible stemmed from his Midwest background and religious and historical studies; as such, aspects of religion would be a topic of study throughout his life.Templeton, David. My Lunch with Sparky, reproduced from the December 30, 1999 – January 5, 2000 issue of the Sonoma County Independent. Archived November 28, 2008. According to a 2015 "spiritual biography", Schulz's religion was personal and complex, and would be integrated in a number of his programs.Lind, Stephen J. "A Charlie Brown Religion: The Spiritual Life and Work of Charles M. Schulz" (Jackson: U P Mississippi, 2015)
The program's script has been described as "barebones", and was completed in only a few weeks. In the days following the special's sale to Coca-Cola, Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez met with Schulz in his home to expand upon the ideas promised in the pitch. Mendelson remembered that on the previous Christmas Day he and his spouse had read Hans Christian Andersen's "The Fir-Tree" to their children. Schulz countered with the idea that there be a tree with the spirit of lead character Charlie Brown. They spoke at length about creating an official theme that was neither jazz nor traditional to open the program. Schulz wanted a part of the special to feature the character of Schroeder performing Beethoven, and Mendelson combined this with the inclusion of Vince Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" number. Schulz penned the script for A Charlie Brown Christmas, with Melendez plotting out the animation via a storyboard. His storyboard contained six panels for each shot, spanning a combined eighty or-so pages.
Mendelson also suggested they employ a laugh track, a staple of television animation, but Schulz rejected this idea immediately. "Up until then, many, if not all, animated shows had laugh tracks," said Mendelson. "As we were discussing how we would handle our special, I said very casually, 'I assume we'll have a laugh track.' It was a statement, not a question. Sparky just got up and quietly walked out of the room. We looked at each other, then Bill said, 'Well, I guess we won't have a laugh track.' Sparky came back in the room, and we went on with the meeting as if the subject had never come up." Schulz felt strongly that the audience at home should not be instructed when to laugh.
Casting