USA, NR, 25 m, 1965
This animated holiday special (a first for the Peanuts gang) may be more pertinent social commentary today than it was when it debuted on CBS some forty years ago. The cartooning is understated (maybe even a little grubby), and the story doesn’t follow a conventional arc (it’s kind of pokey), but it’s a ratings grabber year after year. Everyone’s favorite “blockhead,” the morose, nearly suicidal Charlie Brown, is fed up with the increasing commercialism of the Christmas season, but all that angst at last finds a productive channel when Lucy nominates him to direct the school Christmas pageant. Despite director Bill Melendez’s reservations, Charles Schultz held firm on having Linus quote from the book of Luke, which makes A Charlie Brown Christmas something of a rarity amongst the season’s specials: it actually acknowledges the true meaning of the holiday. Coca-Cola was the show’s original sponsor; subsequent airings (as well as the video release) have since dispensed with a few bits that prominently featured the Coke logo. The jazzy musical score by Vince Guaraldi is the bow that completes the wrap around this curious little package. © Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.
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