Focus on the Family: Daily Citizen: ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is Still Worth Watching

 


‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is Still Worth Watching


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?’” 

Note:  The above comes directly from their website.  Click here to read more.

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