Good Grief
Every family has their own special Christmas traditions, but chances are that you’re one of the millions of Americans that tunes in to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas each year.
The first of nearly 50 Peanuts television movies, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted 50 years ago on December 9th, 1965, reaching an audience of nearly 15 million homes. Initially an advertising machine for Coca-Cola, the holiday special was an instant hit and has been played on TV annually every year since. Only 25 minutes in length, the movie features its title character Charlie Brown feeling dismayed by the commercialism of the holiday season, searching instead for the true meaning of Christmas.
If you’re like me, you’ve seen this movie a hundred times, and no holiday season is complete without it. From the cozy feeling of the season, to Vince Guaraldi’s iconic jazz soundtrack, to that dinky little “Charlie Brown Christmas tree,” this traditional TV special perfectly embodies both the dark and light feelings and emotions of this time of year, but as it turns out, A Charlie Brown Christmas almost didn’t even air.
Credit: CBC/ Photofest
Start the slideshow below to learn 5 crazy facts you probably didn’t know about A Charlie Brown Christmas, and don’t forget to tune in and watch this year! Then SHARE with your friends.
5. Producers at CBS Thought It Would Flop
Credit: CBS/ Photofest
Riding on the popularity of the 1960’s phenomenon from the funnies, Coca-Cola approached animator Bill Melendez regarding a Peanuts Christmas special. One day later, Melendez and Charles M. Schulz had the story basics all planned out.
But even shortly before airing, executive producer Lee Mendelson and his team had their doubts. Mendelson recently recalled, “Bill and I thought that it just didn’t work. Networks didn’t think it worked. And then half the country tuned in to watch it, so it worked.”
4. It Originally Had a Different Title
Credit: CBS/ Photofest
Saying A Charlie Brown Christmas may roll right off your tongue today, but as it turns out, the film was originally called Charlie Brown’s Christmas. The difference may seem subtle, but the change of syntax holds a lot of meaning.
3. The Voice Actors Were Amateurs
Source: Twitter @SAcurrent/ CBS/ ABC
To save money and add authenticity to the production, the voice actors for the majority of the Peanuts gang were amateurs… no, like really, really amateur. At Schulz’s request, the production team found kids from animator and director Bill Melendez’s neighborhood in southern California. As it turns out, some of the kids were so young that they couldn’t read the script, so Melendez had to recite the script line by line for the children to learn and repeat.
2. Linus’s Speech Was Almost Cut
Source: Twitter @Pure_Flix
At the end of the day, A Charlie Brown Christmas is all about discovering the true meaning of Christmas. This lesson is most enforced when Linus delivers his famous speech in the auditorium during practice for the pageant. From the start, Schulz was set on including a religious message in the movie, and this is no more obvious than when Linus recites several lines from the Gospel of Luke about the annunciation of Jesus’s birth. This speech, however, almost didn’t make it.
Producer Lee Mendelson thought that the speech was too religious for the children’s TV special and that it took away from the entertainment value of the film. Luckily, Schulz got his way, and Linus’s emotional explanation of the true meaning of Christmas survives to this day.
1. Schulz Hated the Jazz Music
Source: Twitter @newburcomics
As I sit here writing this article, I’m listening to jazz musician Vince Guaraldi’s warming and iconic soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas, but as it turns out, Charles M. Schulz hated jazz and called it “awful.” At the end of the day, however, Schulz was the one who requested that Guaraldi — whom he had previously worked with — return to compose for the Christmas special.