It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown!

When Christmas returns on Monday (9 p.m. ET/PT), its milestone year will be commemorated with an anniversary show, It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown! . The retrospective “It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown” is hosted by Kristen Bell and features performances by artists including Sarah McLachlan, Boyz II Men, Matthew Morrison (“Glee”), Pentatonix … and Kristin Chenoweth, who won a Tony Award for her portrayal of Sally in the 1999 Broadway revival of the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown“.

“If you’re not doing anything tonight, turn on your TV at 8 and join ABC’s celebration of Charlie Brown’s 50th Christmas, or set your recording device to watch it later”.

“Peanuts” comic-strip creator Charles Schulz and his production crew, guided by producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, believed they had made a dud.

For many of us, A Charlie Brown Christmas is as synonymous with the holidays as ice skating, school pageants and finding the ideal tree.

And then Linus speaks up: “Sure, Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about”.

Certainly Charlie Brown would declare “Pig Pen, you’re the only person I know who can LITERALLY leave a CARBON FOOTPRINT in a snowstorm”. (“The drawing was so poor”, said Schulz, who died in 2000.) And the special featured a jazzy, bossa nova-flavored soundtrack by San Francisco musician Vince Guaraldi, who had worked with the team on the earlier Peanuts documentary after Mendelson discovered the pianist’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” on the radio while driving across the Golden Gate Bridge. An advertising executive representing Coca-Cola called Mendelson in April 1965, interested in sponsoring a Peanuts Christmas special. During that time he created a character called “Lucy”, because “he didn’t think my nickname of Lou was suitable”, Van Pelt told me for a 2007 Enquirer story.

But the message in “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is less doctrinal and more spiritual.

KAREN MENDELSON: (As Patty) Yeah, do something right for a change, Charlie Brown.

The publicity-shy Schulz, a Midwesterner who had transplanted to Sebastopol, Calif., had previously spurned numerous TV offers to capitalize on his comic strip. We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering any more.

All the while, Guaraldi’s music hits a tone of reflection, something you don’t always get this time of year amid the fanfare. Linus and Charlie Brown join the group but Snoopy grabs a hold of Linus’ blanket, entangling both Charlie Brown and Linus and spins the two dramatically and then lets go, sending both boys flying. It aired for the first time on TV in 1965.

TV historian and researcher Tim Brooks said that the familiarity of the half-hour Peanuts special is what has helped it last, as boomer and GenX parents reintroduce the program to their own kids.

What: The 50th anniversary airing will be preceded by a special hosted by Kristen Bell. It was followed by “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” in October 1966.

Before it aired on December 9, 1965, almost everyone, including its producers and the network, predicted “A Charlie Brown Christmas” would be a complete and total disaster that could forever ruin the Peanuts brand.

ABC, a unit of the Walt Disney Co., sees the special as part of a long-term play.

“We try really hard not to just recite the whole show when we watch it”, Candy Shively said with a laugh, sitting in her home in East Berlin, Adams County.