Children of the 1980’s had to actually wait for their favorite shows to come on television. We paid attention to the local listings in something called a newspaper, and made note of when holiday specials came on. We even had to sit through *GASP* all of the commercials. My own kids don’t totally get this concept and always ask me if the Bruins game is really “happening right now?” Try to explain the difference between streaming on demand and watching live TV to a kid, and you will see what I mean.
Anyway, us old folk waited for the Grinch, Rudolph and Frosty each year, but my personal favorite was (and still is), A Charlie Brown Christmas. When I was young, I didn’t understand the message, but somehow I identified with Linus and Charlie Brown when they bought their shabby, pathetic little tree, wrapped it in Linus’ blanket and bellowed out Hark the Herald Angels sing at the end. Maybe I just thought it was cool to watch a cartoon on TV at night, knowing Christmas was coming right up. As an adult, while watching the show one year, it dawned on me that I could make an interesting connection with Charlie Brown Christmas and its music: the 25-minute show is full of jazz. Most middle school kids are not exposed to this great American art form, and I saw an opening. I researched the piano music of the show’s composer, Vince Guiraldi, and I realized that all the kids would recognize the main theme, performed by Guiraldi on the piano as the Charlie Brown gang awkwardly dances in the auditorium. In the show, Schroeder plays it while the kids jam and ignore Charlie Brown’s directions to organize the Christmas play. The tune is actually called “Linus and Lucy” and became the peanut gang’s main theme forever after. I also discovered that most of the other tracks are quiet swing versions of Christmas carols. This quickly made me realize that the music alone would not be enough for a 50 minute engaging lesson.
In the end, I decided to dig deeper and see how cartoons were made in 1965, which was the year A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on ABC. What I found is interesting to anyone (like me) who has watched this at least once a year for 45 years or so. Check out these crazy facts:
- The 25-minute special came together in under 6 months at a budget of $96,000 and 13,000 drawings BY HAND running at 12 frames per second.
- The peanuts gang had only appeared as a comic strip in newspapers as well as a couple of 1950’s TV ads pitching Ford cars. ABC knew that the commercials were well received, and thought a Christmas show would score big money in advertising rates. They went to cartoonist Charles M. Schultz in June of 1965 and said “Give us a Christmas show….for this year. Plot and story is up to you.” (more about that later)
- There was not enough time before the air date to perfect the animation. Notably, watch closely in the scene where Charlie Brown visits with Lucy at the psychiatry stand in the snow. The message changes words in different shots, the money can disappears and reappears twice, and appears to shake as it sits still.
- The other big drawing bloopers happen on the Christmas tree. Watch as the little wooden stand, as well as the number of branches change in each shot
- Almost all shows back then used a “laugh track”, which was a recording of human laughter played sporadically, so the audience would get the jokes. Peanuts creator Charles M. Schultz refused, saying “The audience is smart enough to know when to laugh.” Schultz is also the one who came up with the idea of using jazz music instead of cartoon sound effects. ABC network was worried that jazz and no laugh track would tank the whole special….but that was not their biggest worry. Their biggest worry almost got the whole thing cancelled. We all know the show because of Schultz pushing as well as the time crunch (A Charlie Brown Christmas had been announced by the network shortly after Thanksgiving…so they had nothing else). The BIG WORRY: The character of Linus quoting the meaning of Christmas directly from The Bible on primetime network television.
- Charles Schultz loosely based the special on his own childhood, with the commercial aspect of the holiday overshadowing the religious one. He felt strongly that the real message of Christmas in his heart go out to the world. He threatened to pull the entire special if ABC cut the reading from The Bible passage that marks Linus telling Charlie Brown the “true meaning of Christmas.” I wonder what that argument would look like in 2022, instead of 1965. As we all know, Schultz won and the special was not only a hit; the night it premiered (12/9/65), almost half of the country watched it and loved it.
- The musical soundtrack is one of the best selling Christmas albums of all-time and is in The Library of Congress as an “important recording of the historical record of The United States.” (Yes, it’s also on Spotify)
- The children’s voice actors were each paid $5. They all recorded in one day and some were too young to read, so adults whispered the lines to them off microphone and the children repeated them.
- Linus has a lisp on purpose, for Schultz thought it would make the character cuter.
- The kid that voices Lucy grew up to become a 3rd grade teacher. Each year her classes wouldn’t believe it was her until she brought in personal photographs of the shoot.
- After it was on TV, all of the voice actors became popular at their San Francisco area elementary schools and were constantly asked to quote the show.
- While the kids were recording, and running around the studio, members of the rock band Jefferson Airplane were recording up the hall and stopped in to ask the kids for autographs.
- Peppermint Patty does not appear in the special because she had not been thought up yet.
- “A Charlie Brown Christmas” led to “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” as well as “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.”
- Ironically, although the message of the show is about the birth of Christ, Coca-Cola left its mark—or rather its logo, which appeared several times. For instance, in the skating scene, Snoopy throws Linus from the rink into a Coca-Cola sign (did you ever wonder where Linus lands?). Later sponsors objected, and the frames were edited out. When you watch now, Linus never lands. It’s pretty funny.
After all of this research, as well as some YouTube rabbit holes, I decided to make some power point slides. I take the kids through the music and the animation information and then we watch the cartoon. I decided to do this with 6th grade music classes. It remains a popular lesson, and according to the kids, they share a lot of this with their families while watching A Charlie Brown Christmas at home. Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!
Stay awesome, stay safe, stay young at heart…..and stay tuned.
Patrick moeschen 