Charlie Brown and Charles Schulz – A Peanuts Pre-Christmas Post
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A Charlie Brown Christmas – year 59.
Next year will not only be the 75th anniversary of Peanuts debut on October 2, 1950 it will also be the 60th year since A Charlie Brown Christmas first appeared on December 9, 1965.
Of course times have changed and your opportunity to view the Peanuts special free on tv this year is limited (unless you have the DVD).
If “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is on your radar, you may have difficulty watching because only one streaming platform owns the viewing rights — as is the case with Peanuts specials and Apple TV+.
Fortunately, Apple is offering a chance to catch the Christmas special for free.
Chris Sims at Louisville Courier Journal informs us how we can watch the show, including a free time frame:
Viewers can stream “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for free without a subscription on Apple TV+ for two days only ? Saturday, Dec. 14, through Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. The app is available in the Apple App Store or on Google Play.
Still Worth Watching
In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world.
You probably know the spiritual emphasis on regular television made his collaborators nervous.
“Bill said, ‘You can’t put the Bible on television,’” his widow Jean remembered. “And Sparky’s (Schulz’s nickname) answer was: ‘If we don’t, who will?’ Lee said that Sparky then got up and walked out of the room, and he and Bill just sat there, saying ‘What do you think that means?’”
What it meant was Charles Schulz was willing to walk away from the television deal if producers insisted on cutting out the true meaning of Christmas.
It’s ironic but true that Linus van Pelt’s recitation is often the first sacred words of Scripture that some children ever hear.
Focus On The Family’s Paul Batura offers a religious view on the Goodness of the 1965 television special.
Good Grief!
The sound of Charlie Brown saying “Good Grief!” is forever ingrained in my mind from religiously watching the Peanuts holiday specials as a kid, and I still hear it every time a reread Charles M. Schulz’s original Peanuts comic strips. But it wasn’t until I read what Schulz said about how he went about conveying emotion with his cartoon characters that I understood the deeper meaning behind that iconic catchphrase. And I have to say, it’s a bit darker than I expected.
Schulz was not a fan of absurd caricatures of human emotions, and believed that a cartoonist should give their characters mild reactions whenever possible. After reading Schulz’s comments, I immediately thought back to Charlie Brown’s catchphrase “Good Grief!” – and then it clicked. Schulz’s “mild” reactions weren’t just his preference for cartooning in general, but also in maintaining the characterizations of certain characters, specifically Charlie Brown. “Good Grief!” reads as being a “big” reaction, but the fact that it’s “mild” speaks to who Charlie Brown is as a character on a deeper level.
Spencer Connolly at Screen Rant theorizes on the real meaning of “Good Grief.”
Good Ol’ Charlie Brown – he’s a monetizer!
Peanuts Worldwide’s Tara Botwick on why a collaboration with Anya Hindmarch proved a “perfect alignment” for the brands.
From Brands Untapped Tara Botwick – Senior Director of International Territory Management EMEA at Peanuts Worldwide – discusses her approach to striking partnerships.
Tara, what appealed about bringing Peanuts together with the Anya Hindmarch brand?
Identifying new and exciting partnerships is an important piece of our strategy at Peanuts. Anya’s playful accessories and stationery seemed like a great way to feature the fun of the Peanuts characters in beautiful everyday products.
All I really need to know I learned from Linus
For me in particular, I’ve lived my life according to the things I learned from my spirit animal, Linus Van Pelt, and I feel I’m the better for it.
Jim Beard at 13th Dimension reveals some of his favorite Peanuts strips starring Linus.
“keep on trying”
Charles M Schulz drew his beloved Peanuts strip for 50 years until his announcement on 14 December 1999 that ill health was forcing him to retire. In History looks at how an unassuming cartoonist built a billion-dollar empire out of the lives of a group of children, a dog and a bird.
In a 1977 BBC interview, he said…
In 1990, he told the BBC…
Greg McKevitt pulls from BBC interviews to profile Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz.
Back in 1977, Schulz insisted that the cartoonist’s role was mostly to point out problems rather than trying to solve them, but there was one lesson that people could take from his work. He said: “I suppose one of the solutions is, as Charlie Brown, just to keep on trying. He never gives up. And if anybody should give up, he should.”
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