It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown

In a 2001 interview, producer Lee Mendelson recalled the reaction of a CBS executive who attended a screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” shortly before it was scheduled to premiere, on December 9, 1965: “Well, it’s in the TV Guide logs – we gotta put it on the air”.

When: “It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown” at 8 p.m. Monday, Nov. 30; “A Charlie Brown Christmas” at 9 p.m. There will be a special celebrating its anniversary on Monday, and it has given some thoughts about the Peanuts legacy after the release of The Peanuts Movie. My brother and I shared a bunk in the den, while two uncles, one of them about ready to ship out to Vietnam, slept in another bed.

“We didn’t think it worked”, Mendelson explained.

Network executives were even less gung-ho about what they saw. The fact that it can still air on the holidays shows that people are still looking for the true meaning of Christmas, just like Charlie Brown was 50 years ago.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” broke other rules, too.

Mendelson’s association with Schulz came largely out of a proposal for a documentary on the cartoonist, who resisted at first, but relented after learning Mendelson had made one on baseball legend Willie Mays that Schulz enjoyed. Charlie Brown is the same “lovable loser” as we’ve always seen him.

“I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about”, he laments, and asks if anyone does. And on November 6, the gang heads to the big screen in 20th Century Fox and Blue Sky Studios’ animated feature The Peanuts Movie. Schulz’s response has gone down in history: “If we don’t do it, who will?”

Audiences quickly embraced “Charlie Brown Christmas” as a seasonal parable of redemption, well in keeping with “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Recognize this character? Shermy made a rare television appearance in the special complaining that he plays a shepherd every year. “[It’s] one of my favorite moments in our 50 years of production”.

“We were a jazz trio and we were working and part of it was we went in there and played as hard and honestly as we could”, Canadian Jerry Granelli, 74, of the The Vince Guaraldi Trio told CBC News. Again, Schulz – who according to his biographer was engaged in a lifelong internal struggle over his own Christian beliefs – was insistent: “We can’t avoid it”. When not haltingly exchanging philosophical banter in static shots, the wonky cartoon kids – everyman Charlie Brown, precocious Linus, capricious Lucy, prodigy Schroeder, and the others familiar around the world through the wildly popular Peanuts comic strip – delivered stilted punchlines that weren’t even accompanied by canned laughter. Linus finishes, says, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown”. Kristen Chenoweth will sing “Happiness” from the 1967 Broadway hit “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown”. “Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine”, he told them. Charlie Brown confronts futility, in the form of kite-hobbling trees and snatched-away footballs, as Linus clutches his security blanket.

One of the pleasures of the holiday season is feeling nostalgic, and indulging in the annual rituals that remind us of past happy times.

“If you look at the Christmas show and ‘The Great Pumpkin, ‘ what they have in common is that they’re both about faith”, said Melendez, the veteran animator who died at 91 in 2008.