Deconstructing: A Charlie Brown Christmas

Having grown up in the “12 channel TV” era, I desperately embraced anything that could be considered appealing to a kid during that time. Generally that content was shown during three time periods: early weekday mornings, weekday afternoons, and Saturday mornings. The rest of the time the TV was out of your control, filled with talk shows, old movies, and worst of all – news.

That’s what made A Charlie Brown Christmas so special. You knew it was special because they told you.

Holy crap – cartoons in PRIME TIME. Tonight, it would be kids 1, loser parents 0! Take that, Scarecrow & Mrs. King!

What’s funny with CBC is that there is no way in hell this gets made today. It’s not particularly funny (Peanuts could never really be perceived as LOL humor), it’s slowly placed (which would never sell now – have you seen stuff like Chum Chum & Fanboy?), it’s bitter (it is Charlie Brown), and it’s packed full of religion – not exactly a recipe for network television success.

CBS apparently didn’t think so either, trying taking out Linus’ biblical passage solo and insisting on a laugh track (think Flintstones) which would have worked about as well as it did for Sports Night, and lasted just about as many years.

But Charles Schulz stuck to his guns and since the special was pretty much bought and paid for by Coca-Cola, the network really had nothing to lose and showed it, assuming it would tank and they’d find something else to show the following season.

Notsomuch.

CBC had 15.4 million viewers in its debut, which is an impressive number now. In 1965, it was over 50% of the viewing audience, making it the #2 show that week behind Bonanza, whose viewing was required by law in some parts of the country. Viewers ate it up, critics praised it, and a holiday tradition was born. CBS showed it every year until 2001, when ABC began showing it after acquiring the rights the year prior, and usually wins its network time slot each year.

But why do we watch it? Let’s take a look:

Loser Charlie Brown, feeling about as suicidal as any elementary school kid can feel, looks for a reason not to end his miserable life. His classmates are happy and he knows he’s supposed to be happy because it’s the Christmas season and he’s a kid, but since no one has sent him a Christmas card (even Linus – more about this in a sec) he’s hitting rock bottom. He reaches out to a classmate in a desperate attempt to believe that maybe his neglect has been unintentional, but it’s reconfirmed making Charlie Brown feel even worse. He goes to see Lucy who tells him to direct the school play about the Nativity (yes – schools did these 40+ years ago), but not without getting in a dig about how many gifts she gets.

[So Charlie Brown gets no cards? I mean, Charlie Brown isn't exactly popular, but Linus is a good friend of his, and Snoopy seems like the kind who sends out cards to every person in the neighborhood just to let people know how great his life is, so you'd think he'd be good for two. Either CB's throwing a pity party for himself or Lucy's stealing all of his cards in an attempt to keep CB weak enough to keep going to her - at a nickel a pop - for psychiatric advice. I'm thinking the latter.]

CB then runs into Snoopy, who is decorating his house. This doesn’t bother Charlie that much until he finds out it’s for a neighborhood competition, which pisses off CB. WTF? He was going to decorate anyway, the Brown house isn’t decorated from what I could tell, so why does Charlie Brown have an issue with Snoopy decorating? Just because you’re a loser doesn’t mean you have to have to drag everyone down your depression spiral, Charlie. Some of us want to succeed.

Charlie then is asked to write a letter to Santa for his sister Sally. This doesn’t bother him until he learns that Sally is just asking for money this year. Apparently making requests for material objects is fine for Charlie, but cash is off limits. Hypocrite.

CB gets to play rehearsal where people are having fun. Charlie must end this to get people down to his depression level. He gets pissy because people won’t listen to him (news flash Charlie – you’re a grade school kid who thinks he’s running a school play. Good luck with that) so he leaves to get something to make the play have the “proper mood” – a Christmas tree. You know, because nothing says “birth of Christ” like a Douglas Fir.

Charlie and Linus look at the trees, and CB picks out the crappiest one of the bunch, because he sees the tree as himself – unwanted and the loser of the lot. Thinking that somehow his choosing of the crap tree will come around full circle and make his friends accept him, he brings it back to the rehearsal with expected results. CB gets ripped apart by the rest of the cast and instead of sticking up for himself (which he can’t do at this point because he agrees with the crowd) he too berates himself. Linus, while not sticking up for him or anything (can’t ruin his sister’s steady source of income), reminds the crowd of the true meaning of Christmas*.
[* yeah, I'm not even about to get into that one]

Having been cheered up by Linus if but for a moment, Charlie grabs his tree and heads home – not to remember the true meaning of Christmas or anything, but to still attempt to gain the acceptance of his peers by taking the symbol of his loserdom (loserness?) and decorating it so that it – and by extension him – can be seen as acceptable. Mind you, he trashed Snoopy for decorating his house, but when it’s a reflection upon himself to get him popularity and acceptance, then it’s OK. He takes one ornament from Snoopy’s house and puts it on the tree, which can’t support it, leaving CB to utter the words “I killed it,” destroying the small bit of inspiration CB had earlier.

Makes you feel all warm and toasty inside, no?

The gang comes by, feeling guilty and wondering if they had to plan for a funeral the next morning. They see the crappy tree about to snap from the one ornament, grab Snoopy’s decorations from his award-winning house, and make the crap tree look great. Here, Charlie Brown. The tree that we mocked you for because it was a piece of crap then you felt twice as worse because you couldn’t decorate it? We make it look great in like three seconds. In the time it takes to sneeze we did better than your best possible effort. Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!

Yet for some reason this does make Charlie Brown feel better, probably because he hasn’t really thought about that last part yet, and we get the happy ending necessary for anything like this. Roll credits.

So what’s the appeal? It could be that deep down, no matter how bad our year is going, we’re at least not Charlie Brown. But the more likely reason is tradition. The Christmas season is all about things you don’t necessarily like but you do them each year because it wouldn’t seem right without them. You drink egg nog despite it having the worst name of any beverage in history. You invite the same relatives into your house that made you unlist your number. You send cards to people you don’t really know or care about and get pissed off if they don’t send them to you. And, you watch Christmas specials that you wouldn’t watch any other time because that’s what you did 30+ years ago and damn it, that’s what you’re supposed to do.

I’d really make fun of it more, but I can’t talk. My favorite Christmas tradition was an excuse to give channel employees Christmas morning off from work.