Bonus: A Charlie Brown Christmas watchalong (w/ Jeff and Jeremy)
PARENTAL WARNING: DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE WITH CHILDREN PRESENT!
What’s up, dudes? Cue the piano, because we’re gonna have a watch-along party for the 1965 Peanuts classic “A Charlie Brown Christmas”! I’ve got Jeff Loftin from Lost Christmas podcast and Jeremy Phelps the Alamo City Santa with me to provide commentary and enjoy the ride!
This is the special CBS was pretty sure they’d just made a mistake. Charles Schulz wrote it, Bill Melendez directed the animation, Lee Mendelson produced it, and Coca-Cola sponsored it after an ad guy asked if they had a Christmas show and Mendelson said yes before he asked Schulz. They built it in about six months on a $76,000 budget (and still went about $20,000 over), with real kids talking, no laugh track, and Vince Guaraldi playing jazz like it belonged next to the tinsel. Schulz got up and left the room when somebody assumed there’d be canned laughs. Mendelson scribbled the words to “Christmas Time Is Here” on the back of an envelope. The network watched a cut and called it slow. Then it aired on CBS on December 9, 1965, at 7:30 p.m. ET, in The Munsters’ Thursday slot, and 45% of the people watching television that night stayed with it. An estimated 15,490,000 homes. Number two, behind Bonanza. An Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Program and a Peabody showed up after that, which is a wild trophy case for a half-hour everybody in the room thought was too quiet.
So press play with us. We’re not gonna recap it like you’ve never seen it. We’re riding the ice, visiting Lucy’s five-cent psychiatric booth, clocking Snoopy’s doghouse light display, and taking Lucy’s very sincere pitch for a big shiny aluminum tree. Charlie Brown, being Charlie Brown, comes back with the little real one. When the rehearsal falls apart, Linus still has Luke 2 and a blanket he is willing to put down. Peter Robbins is Charlie Brown, Christopher Shea is Linus, and the kids recorded the whole thing in a day (Jefferson Airplane was next door and swung by for autographs, because of course they did). Hit play, keep the blanket nearby, and talk through it with us.
Aluminum tree? Check. Nickel therapy? Got it. Guaraldi plus a scripture reading network TV was not ready for? That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown! So grab the sad little sapling, drop a nickel in the booth, and skate on over to this episode on “A Charlie Brown Christmas”!
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