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A Charlie Brown Christmas is Bill Melendez’s 1965 American animated television special depicting Charlie Brown’s depression at the commercialization of the Christmas season and his attempts to direct a Nativity play with the Peanuts ensemble. Peter Robbins voices Charlie Brown. Christopher Shea voices Linus. Tracy Stratford voices Lucy. Kathy Steinberg voices Sally. The teleplay was written by Charles M. Schulz from his Peanuts comic strip characters. Coca-Cola Company commissioned the special and CBS broadcast it on December 9, 1965. The Vince Guaraldi Trio composed and performed the jazz score. The special has aired annually on American television every year since 1965, the longest continuous run of any Christmas television special.
Schulz, Melendez, and producer Lee Mendelson made several decisions that CBS executives believed would doom the special. Children voiced all the children. A jazz score replaced conventional cartoon scoring. Linus delivered an unedited Luke 2:8-14 King James Bible passage as the special’s emotional climax. The production lacked a laugh track. CBS scheduled it expecting failure. The broadcast reached forty-five percent of American households and won both the Emmy and the Peabody. The choices that executives believed would fail were the choices that the audience recognized as authentic. The Christmas-television canon was permanently reshaped by the special’s success.
Linus’s Speech
Linus’s recitation of Luke 2:8-14 is the special’s emotional center and its most consequential single choice. CBS executives had requested the passage be removed. Schulz refused, arguing that the Christmas-meaning question could not be answered without quoting the Christmas story directly. Christopher Shea delivers the passage as a six-year-old child reciting from memory rather than performing.
The choice of King James phrasing rather than modern translation gives the recitation its distinctive cadence and weight. The passage’s middle phrase, ‘and the angel said unto them, Fear not’, requires Linus to drop his security blanket at exactly the line where the angel tells the shepherds not to fear. The visual gesture against the textual content is the special’s quietest sermon. Schulz never explained the blanket-drop publicly but the choice is widely understood by viewers.
For Writers
Sustained respectful treatment of source material that producers believe will alienate audiences can become the production’s strongest single element. Schulz’s defense of the Luke passage made the special.
Vince Guaraldi’s Score
Vince Guaraldi composed and performed the score with bassist Fred Marshall and drummer Jerry Granelli as the Vince Guaraldi Trio. The jazz score was unprecedented for animated television in 1965 and shapes the special’s specific tone permanently. The instrumental ‘Linus and Lucy’, the ice-skating sequence cue, and the children’s voices on ‘Christmas Time Is Here’ have become Christmas standards through television exposure.
Guaraldi’s piano carries the special’s emotional vocabulary more than the dialogue does. The melancholy of the opening, the comic energy of the school-play rehearsal, the reverent stillness of Linus’s recitation, the final ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ chorus: each emotional state is established musically before the visual or dialogue work begins. The score is the special’s emotional structure.
For Writers
Scoring choices that depart radically from genre conventions can permanently shape what a genre considers possible. Guaraldi’s jazz proved that animated children’s television could carry serious musical material.
The Christmas Tree
The small spindly Christmas tree Charlie Brown selects has become one of the most recognized objects in Christmas iconography. Its tilting, sagging weight under a single red ornament has been reproduced as merchandise, as actual Christmas tree decorations, and as visual reference in subsequent films and television. The tree is the special’s central metaphor for the rejected and the overlooked.
The closing sequence where the Peanuts ensemble decorates the small tree with Snoopy’s doghouse decorations and gathers around to sing ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ is the special’s emotional resolution. The tree is transformed not by being replaced but by being decorated. The metaphor for Charlie Brown’s own depression and recovery is the special’s quietest and most generous theological position.
For Writers
Central metaphors in family-aimed productions work when they hold their literal and symbolic registers simultaneously. The Christmas tree is both a tree and a stand-in for everything the world has decided is not good enough.
Craft Note
Bill Melendez directed and provided the voice of Snoopy as well. Lee Mendelson produced and went on to produce all subsequent Charlie Brown specials. The animation was simple and limited, partly through budget and partly through deliberate aesthetic choice. The special cost approximately seventy-six thousand dollars to produce, a small budget even by 1965 television standards. The annual broadcast continued on CBS through 2000 and then moved to ABC, which has held the special’s broadcast rights since.
Verdict
A Charlie Brown Christmas is the most consequential Christmas television production ever made and one of the finest pieces of holiday animation in any era. The Schulz teleplay, the Guaraldi score, Linus’s speech, and the small Christmas tree together produce something that subsequent productions have repeatedly tried to imitate and never matched. Required annual viewing.
FAQ
Who directed A Charlie Brown Christmas?
Bill Melendez directed the special. He also provided the voice of Snoopy and went on to direct most subsequent Peanuts productions.
Why does Linus drop his blanket during his speech?
Linus drops his security blanket at the line ‘Fear not’. Charles Schulz never explicitly explained the choice publicly, but the gesture is widely understood as a visual sermon about the speech’s theological content.
Did A Charlie Brown Christmas win awards?
Yes. The special won the 1966 Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program and the 1966 Peabody Award.
Is the special still broadcast annually?
Yes. It has aired annually on American television every year since 1965. Broadcast moved from CBS to ABC in 2001 and was acquired by Apple TV+ in 2020, with PBS holding a brief annual broadcast window through 2022.
Who composed the music?
Vince Guaraldi composed the score, performed by the Vince Guaraldi Trio with Guaraldi on piano, Fred Marshall on bass, and Jerry Granelli on drums.
How long is the special?
A Charlie Brown Christmas runs approximately twenty-five minutes.
What is the special’s rating?
A Charlie Brown Christmas is rated G.