I'm Finally
Watching the First Peanuts Special
By Chris Sabga
1965's
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" has been a classic childhood
holiday staple for over five decades.
Everyone's
childhood except mine.
Whenever I'd tell
people that I've never seen "A Charlie Brown Christmas,"
shock would take over their faces. Then their voices would lower.
"You've never seen it?" they would whisper in hushed tones,
clearly aghast by the mind-boggling information I've just given them.
I could see it in their eyes and read their minds: To them, I lived
the most deprived childhood possible.
Actually, my childhood
was great! I spent it watching another
Christmas classic: "Die Hard." Yippee Ki-yay...
My
friend Neil from the YouTube
channel "IWALVG" (I Will Always Love Video Games) found
himself in the opposite
situation. He had never seen "Die Hard." Of course, most
9-year-olds probably aren't going to be watching that like I was.
Still, it's now decades later and we both had a gaping hole to
fill in our respective pursuits of cinematic Christmastime cheer. He still hadn't seen "Die Hard" and I'd
never seen "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
Well,
Neil lived up to his end of the bargain. Now it was my turn.
I
found the movie in a
double-feature DVD with "The Peanuts Movie" for
$9 at Walmart. A
$5 VUDU digital movie code knocked
the price down even further in my mind.
Other than a very lucky Goodwill find, it was never going to get any
cheaper than this.
It
was either now or never.
As
soon as I pressed the "Play" button, I was instantly
charmed by "A Charlie Brown Christmas."
It
tells a very simple – but powerful – story. Charlie Brown has
become depressed by the over-commercialization of Christmas. Lucy
needs someone to direct the school's Christmas play. She
recognizes that Charlie Brown
needs a project to sink his teeth into. They agree to help each other
out. Will Charlie Brown rediscover the joy of Christmas?
We
all know the answer to that, of course.
One
of Charlie Brown's tasks is finding the perfect Christmas tree for
the play. Even people who
have never seen "A Charlie Brown Christmas" – such as me,
before now – know about "the
Charlie Brown tree." It's famous outside the movie. It may
be a tiny, wilted, shedding,
pathetic little tree – but Charlie Brown sees something special in
it that nobody else does. Will everyone else eventually see the
tree the way Charlie Brown
does?
Again,
we all know the answer to that.
There's
a scene with Linus reciting a Bible passage that he says demonstrates
the true meaning of Christmas. Something like that would probably
never be allowed today. Believe it or not, it was frowned upon for
different reasons back then. According to the DVD extra "A
Christmas Miracle: The Making of A Charlie Brown Christmas," it
was suggested to "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz that
comic strips were "too crass" for Biblical verses. Schulz
took offense, and rightfully so, because he was a tremendously gifted
storyteller whose medium of choice just happened to be the unique art
form of comic strips. There was nothing
lowbrow about what he was doing with Charlie Brown, Lucy, Snoopy, and the
gang.
The
beauty of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is in its stark
simplicity. In only 25 minutes, it tells a wonderful story and fills
its viewers with the cozy warmth of Christmas.
__
It took almost three
decades for Charlie Brown to finally appear in another Christmas
special: 1992's "It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown."
The Peanuts gang's return to Christmas is entertaining enough, but it
lacks the magic, powerful storytelling, and emotional wallop of the
original. It tends to meander on a bit, unlike the more focused "A
Charlie Brown Christmas." It works as a double feature with the
original, but it's unlikely to stand the test of the time the way the
1965 classic has.
