By Mark Patterson
Customarily, network execs, the people who decide what tv shows to roll the dice on, offer at least perfunctory applause after viewing prospective programs for the first time. As a courtesy to the creative forces sitting nervously in the private studio- theater and praying for a thumbs up.
On this occasion, however, Dec 8, 1965, after an awkward pause as silent as January snow (the kind that Lucy finds tastiest), CBS brass bypassed the niceties and gave a disappointed critique of the proposed Christmas special they’d just watched. Grammar school children swapping adult cynicisms and sulking around in a state of existential angst was decidedly NOT what the powerful station had commissioned. And there were other issues. “It’s too religious, and nothing really happens,” Charles Schultz, creator and illustrator of the legendary Peanuts comic strip, was told. But since airing was scheduled for the next day, and a substitution would be impossible, America would judge for themselves. All involved braced for an epic crash-and-burn.
The next night, A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted to a record 15-million viewers, and a beloved tradition was born. Critical acclaim, an Emmy, and even a prestigious “Peabody” award would follow for the languidly-paced program that pioneered, at the insistence of Schultz, who detested people being “told what was funny,” the absence of canned laughter.
A bolder innovation was the special’s iconic sound-track, a series of hypnotically-relaxing jazz tunes that envelope the listener like Linus’s blanket fluffed in a warm dryer, while tinging the conservative theme with an elevating hipness. Who knew (NO connection to those annoying Wal-Mart commercials intended) that the music traditionally associated with coffee shops and beatniks could pair so magically with Santa Clause and sugar cookies?
Vince Guaraldi must have. The San Francisco-based jazz pianist first attained recognition in 1963 as composer of the grammy-winning instrumental “Cast your Fate to the Wind,” but before suffering a fatal heart attack 13 years later, would become much better known as the innovator behind the Charlie Brown music.
The most well-known of those compositions, “Linus and Lucy,” first got play on an all-purpose album geared to evoke he of the single curl, but when repurposed for the Christmas special, rose to musical immortality as backdrop for that iconic dance scene. With all respect to Peppermint Patty, who does a mean “mashed potato,” the irrepressible Pigpen takes my Mirror Ball Trophy for moving like an extra from The Walking Dead. Or maybe it’s some sort of Frankenstein tango?
Ironically, for a program that preaches-literally, in the climactic Linus scene-the importance of observing Christ’s birthday in a non-commercial manner, the original cut includes several product placements for Coca Cola. The modern version, at various times sponsored by a whole variety of evil corporations, of course fuzzes out all soft-drink insignia.
In a Grinch-worthy move to privatize a treasured piece of Christmas, Apple has purchased sole rights to the show through 2030, thus confirming its new property’s 60-year-old conspiracy theory about “Big Eastern Syndicates” controlling the holidays. That the mighty tech behemoth actually headquarters way out west seems somehow beside the point. The point being that for $12.99 a month (a sum the streaming channel no doubt hopes to rake from my account in perpetuity) I can view a yearly reminder that the holidays are NOT about money or commerce.
Charles Schulz-“Sparky” to his friends-had a more reverent take on the yuletide season. A deeply religious native Midwesterner, the Peanuts creator delivered a special that leaned heavily into the “true meaning of Christmas” and even included a biblical recitation. Thus, that mesmerizing “city of David” lecture from a drooling tyke became part of holiday lore. Schulz took pride that Linus’s signature prop spawned the commonly used term “security blanket.”
The man generally acknowledged as the GOAT of cartoonists, however, had zero experience in making his characters move, so that task fell to the legendary animator Bill Melendez, who had honed his colored pencils on Disney classics like Pinocchio, Dumbo, and Bambi. “Sparky was very protective of his characters,” said the Mexican/American Melendez, whose work would garner eight primetime Emmy awards, “So we had to assure him we had no intention of stealing the Peanuts gang.” Melendez believed that a full-hour of televised animation tended to strain viewer’s eyes, and lobbied successfully for a 30-minute format that would set the standard for future Christmas specials such as “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “Frosty the Snowman.” The man who made Charlie brown walk also “voiced” Snoopy, an effect achieved by speaking intelligible lines and then playing them….. backwards.
A Charlie Brown Christmas may never convert me from my crass, commercial way of celebrating the season, but if I don’t succumb to Apple’s extortion, a cherished family ritual fades into nostalgia. And how else would I know that the wintry terror I feel on ascending that steep, endless escalator at the Pittsburgh Zoo indicates a case of “climacophobia?” Just supposing I owe Lucy some six-decades worth of “cold, hard” clanking coins for that diagnosis, I guess I could settle the account, at least indirectly, by coughing up to see my favorite Christmas special. I’d better subscribe to Apple right now.
