Flashback, December 1965: “Charlie Brown Christmas” Airs

Forty-five years ago this past week, Charles Schulz’ adaptation of his Peanuts comic strip, A Charlie Brown Christmas, aired on CBS, earning Peabody and Emmy Awards and, by spawning more than a dozen follow-up specials, becoming a cornerstone of its franchise.

Jazz fans know the show for another reason: its soundtrack lifted to even greater prominence the pianist-composer Vince Guaraldi, whose “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” had landed him a Grammy a couple of years before.

For years, as one of Guaraldi’s fans, I would listen to the "Charlie Brown Christmas" CD or hear tunes from it on the radio or at a coffeeshop. Or I might hear one of the cover versions by admirers such as Shawn Colvin, Sarah MacLachlan or George Winston.

But until this week, I had never understood how the music was used in the special itself, because I had never seen the special in its entirety, believe it or not.

Then the other day, seeing the CD and DVD packaged together and on sale at my local Starbucks, I was seized by an irresistible impulse to buy it. Since then, I’ve watched the DVD twice. Before the season is out, I wouldn’t be surprised if I watched it twice more--I liked the show so much.

Consider the opening song, “Christmastime Is Here.” The lyrics, by executive producer Lee Mendelson, speak of “happiness and cheer,” but Guaraldi’s melancholy melody stands in lonely opposition to them—in much the same way that Charlie Brown, virtually alone among the children, wonders what the impending holiday, with all its blatant commercialism, is all about.

(In fact, Charlie Brown feels like a younger version of the depressive who questioned “To be or not to be”--except that, instead of receiving obeisance as the Prince of Denmark, this angst-ridden little boy from Middle America is universally derided as a blockhead by the other, happier, but less thoughtful children.)

Amazingly, CBS executives hated virtually everything about the special when it was previewed for them a few weeks before broadcast: the lack of a laugh track, the use of actual children’s voices (often untrained), humor deemed too sophisticated for children (in a portent of our current economic crisis, after Lucy complains that she gets stupid toys for the holiday and Charlie Brown asks what she really wants, she responds: “Real estate”), Linus’ climatic reading from the Gospel of Matthew, even Guaraldi’s music.

Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed, and the animated special went on to become one of the baby-boom generation's beloved holiday perennials. Two years ago, the Paley Center for Media announced that A Charlie Brown Christmas, along with two other specials from the 1960s--Rudolph the Red-Nosed Raindeer and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, finished in its top four of favorite holiday specials. (The winner: The Star Wars Holiday Special, never repeated after its initial 1978 run.)