Christmas Series: Charlie Brown
History of A Charlie Brown Christmas
The holiday favorite that almost didn’t get made
On December 9, 1965, A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered on CBS TV as a 30-minute animated Christmas special written by Charles M. Schulz, creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip. The comic was hugely popular at the time when the TV special debuted.
Though this was not Schulz’s first TV special — that would be his 1963 A Boy Named Charlie Brown — nor the last, it would become the most enduring. It is a staple of holiday viewing today, and Christmas is incomplete without gathering family and friends around the TV to watch it.
San Francisco Bay Area musician Vince Guaraldi, known at the time for his instrumental hit Cast Your Fate To The Wind, provided what was then an unusually melancholy jazz soundtrack along with traditional and classical music for the special. Along with producer Lee Mendelson, it took Shultz a day to outline the story for the sponsor Coca-Cola, weeks to write it, and six months to film.
Controversy of a Biblical Reference in A Charlie Brown Christmas
There is a significant scene near the end of the special when, as Charlie Brown asks what Christmas is all about —…
