 For me the Christmas season doesn’t sink in until the first airing of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. With all the uber-commercialism of the season, sales where people are getting trampled, short tempeers and jockeying for Christmas vacation days, it’s so refreshing to see something from the days of yore that hasn’t changed a bit. Charlie Brown, in all his badly modulated sound and South-Park-esque animation, is muddling his way through trying to find a Christmas Tree and his “friends” are clowning him all the way (all except Franklin - he doesn’t want to lose his gig). And when Chuck has had enough and wants to know the real meaning of Christmas, Linus Van Pelt steps into a soft spotlight and schools these suckas. A man after my own heart.
Lights, PleaseAnd there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid … And the angel said unto them, “Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings o great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord.And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men.
That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.
Here’s the beginning of an interesting article about how it almost never happened: USATODAY.com - The Christmas classic that almost wasn’t
When CBS bigwigs saw a rough cut of A Charlie Brown Christmas in November 1965, they hated it. They said it was slow, executive producer Lee Mendelson remembers with a laugh.There were concerns that the show was almost defiantly different: There was no laugh track, real children provided the voices, and there was a swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi. Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez fretted about the insistence by Peanuts creator Charles Schulz that his first-ever TV spinoff end with a reading of the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke by a lisping little boy named Linus.We told Schulz, Look, you cant read from the Bible on network television, Mendelson says. When we finished the show and watched it, Melendez and I looked at each other and I said, Weve ruined Charlie Brown.
Good grief, were they wrong. The first broadcast was watched by almost 50% of the nations viewers. When I started reading the reviews, I was absolutely shocked, says Melendez, 89. They actually liked it! How Peanuts rate A Charlie Brown Christmas drew 15.4 million viewers when it first aired in 1965,making it the second-most watched program on television that week.
The top show: Bonanza.Ratings last year for threecartoon favorites still airing:Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer(1964), 14.9 million viewers.Tied for 15th place the week itran. CBS.A Charlie Brown Christmas,13.6 million. 18th place theweek it aired. ABC.Frosty the Snowman (1969),10.1 million. Tied for 38th placethe week it aired. CBS.And when the program airs today at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, it will mark its 40th anniversary - a run that has made it a staple of family holiday traditions and an icon of American pop culture. The show won an Emmy and a Peabody award and began a string of more than two dozen Peanuts specials.Last year, 13.6 million people watched it, making it the 18th-most-popular show on television the week it aired; CSI was first. One advertiser on the show, financial services giant MetLife, has contracted to use Peanuts characters in its advertising since 1985 and will continue through at least 2012.Schulz, who died in 2000, never doubted the power of his tale of Charlie Browns quest for the true meaning of Christmas amid the garish trappings of a commercialized holiday.
It comes across in the voice of a child, says Jeannie Schulz, the wife of the cartoonist, whose friends called him Sparky. Sparky used to say there will always be a market for innocence.Peter Robbins, now 49, was the voice of Charlie Brown. This show poses a question that I dont think had been asked before on television: Does anybody know the meaning of Christmas?
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