Why We Love “A Charlie Brown Christmas”

00:00:27
Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories, this one howe A Charlie Brown Christmas came to be and almost didn’t. Americans fell in love with the show, and it first aired on television back in 1965. It’s been a part of our lives ever since. But the story of how Charles Schultz’s A Charlie Brown Christmas came to be is itself an American classic; so too is the story of how it almost didn’t come to be. But first things first, the thirty-minute Christmas special wasn’t birthed by the creative. It was commissioned by a commercial sponsor looking to turn the nation’s most beloved newspaper cartoon strip into an animated TV special. Here’s Lee Mendelssohn, who produced the special, telling the story of how this special came to be.

00:01:17
Speaker 2: Would your creative group be interested in doing a Christmas special for Coca-Cola? Have you thought about doing when? I said, ‘Oh, absolutely, we think about it all the time.’ And he said, ‘Well, we need an outline down in Atlanta on Monday. It was Wednesday, so send us what you have, and we’ll see what happens.’ So I called him, Mister Schultz, on the phone. I called him Mister Melndez because we’d worked together on the documentary two years before. And I said, ‘I think I just sold A Charlie Brown Christmas.’ And they said, ‘What’s that?’ And I said to Schultz, ‘That’s something you’re going to write tomorrow.’ So Bill flew up from Hollywood, and I drove up from San Francisco, and he did write it on a Thursday. Those days, we sent it by Western Union on a Friday, and Monday they called up and said, ‘Okay, let’s do it, Charlie Browd Christmas!’

00:02:01
Speaker 1: The team worked fast. They had only three months to create a script, record it, make a soundtrack, and create 30,000 animation cells from scratch. And this was all before the days of computer-animated design. When the special was finished, it wasn’t a hit with network executives. The first problem was the laugh track, or the lack thereof. It was unimaginable to produce TV comedy without it. Back in the 1960s, Schultz thought more highly of the viewers. He didn’t believe they needed to be cued to laugh at predetermined moments. Another disagreement involved the voice work. CBS executives wanted to use adult actors who pretended to be kids. Schultz believed that using children gave the characters more authenticity. The CBS executives also had a problem with the jazz soundtrack by Vince Giraldi. The music was too sophisticated for a children’s program. They worried; they wanted something younger. The CBS executives also thought the show was too slow. They didn’t think there was enough action in a show dedicated to children with limited attention spans. Last, the CBS executives worried about the scene where Linus recites the story of the birth of Jesus Christ from the Gospel of Luke. It was too long, they believed, and too literal. The CBS executives assumed that Americans, especially American kids, wouldn’t want to sit through a spoken passage from the King James Bible.

00:03:30
Speaker 3: Quote.

00:03:31
Speaker 1: ‘They were freaking out about something so overtly religious in a Christmas special,’ explained Bill Melendez. ‘They basically wrote it off.’ Schultz didn’t just get pushback from CBS executives; members of his own team were skeptical too. Welendez himself was hesitant. Quote. ‘I was leery of the religion that came into it. I was right away opposed to it,’ he told reporters. Luckily, for Schultz, he was the beneficiary of a tight production schedule for the network; the advertising agency and the show’s sponsor, Coca-Cola, had already promoted the show in TV Guide. Schultz had leverage, and he wasn’t about to capitulate on key creative elements. And they aired the special as Schultz had intended. And that’s why Charles Schultz was Charles Schultz. He intuitively knew the things Americans cared about, the things that gave their lives meaning. The longtime Sunday school teacher also knew the reading from the Gospel of Luke was the centerpiece of the show and a centerpiece of American life. It’s a scene we’ll always remember, which Charlie Brown sinks into despair while trying to find the true meaning of Christmas. Linus walks on stage, stage center, and under a narrow spotlight, quotes that scripture from the Gospel of Luke.

00:04:52
Speaker 3: And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flop. By night, be loo, Angel, the Lord came upon them. The glory of the Lord shall round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the Angel said unto them, ‘If youar not, for behold, I bring you tiding for great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, just Christ, the Lord. And this shall be a sign onto you: you shall find the abe wrapped in swaddle, them clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the Angel and multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, would will toward men.”

00:05:40
Speaker 1: And after Linus finishes, he walks across the stage and says, ‘And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.’ CBS executives were certain the show would be a ratings disaster. Programmers, well, they were equally grim, informing the production team, ‘We will, of course, air it next week, but I’m afraid we won’t be ordering anymore.’ On Thursday, December 8, 1965, the half-hour special aired, preempting The Monsters and following Gilligan’s Island. Fifty percent of American television tuned in. The cartoon was a critical and commercial hit, winning an Emmy and a Peabody Award. Linus’s recitation was hailed by critic Harriet Van Horn of The World-Telegram, who wrote, ‘Linus’s reading of the story of the Nativity was quite simply the dramatic highlight of the television season.’ Coca-Cola? Well, it was inundated with letters from fans of the special. Here’s one: ‘Gentlemen, I am writing the first fan letter in my fifty-two years of a rather full life, to compliment you on sponsoring the A Charlie Brown Christmas television program. I don’t know when any program has delighted as many adults as well as children, and I am writing to express the hope that you might be able to sponsor additional Charlie Brown programs. Grand Rapids, Michigan.’ And here’s another to the makers of Coca-Cola: ‘We wish to compliment you on the Peanuts show you sponsored on TV. Your production stands out as refreshing as your product. Our thanks to you and Mister Schultz for bringing to the four in his wholesome philosophy, the real spirit of Christmas, which is so often obliterated by a false one. It is our hope that Peanuts may find a permanent place in the TV realm. May the makers of Coca-Cola be greatly blessed for their part in this worthwhile endeavor.’ Sign the Sisters of Saint Francis in Belvernon, Pennsylvania. But A Charlie Brown Christmas found that permanent place in the TV realm, that’s for sure, and in America’s hearts. It’s equaled only by the 1966 program How the Grinch Stole Christmas and its popularity among young and old alike. Thank God the Grinch-like executives at CBS chose to air the special back in 1965. If it had been left to their instincts, we’d have one less national treasure to cherish come Christmas time. The story of A Charlie Brown’s Christmas—the story of Charles Schultz, in a way—and his intuitive understanding of what works in programming. The idea of having a jazz soundtrack, one of the most beloved of all time, was something all of the suits thought was a bad idea, but not Schultz. The kid actors, not the adult actors. The laugh track, and the absence thereof; and most importantly, that by I will see all of these great artistic decisions make A Charlie Brown Christmas what it is. That story, the story of how A Charlie Browd Christmas came to be and almost didn’t hear on our American Stories.