Our Seasonal Best to You

I am not a celebrator of holidays. But some of you are, I suspect, so my season’s greetings to you. Thanks for reading. We’re about to end posts indefinitely again.

I do like some Christmas cartoons and have posted frames from them over the years here. And I have a soft spot for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which turned 60 this year. I was a big Peanuts reader at the time it premiered, cutting strips out of the paper and pasting them into scrapbooks, and buying all the Fawcett paperbacks.

The special was enjoyable, though the music was a little odd to nine-year-old me, as I expected cartoon music.

The reviews were mostly favourable. Jerry Coffey in the Dec. 11, 1965 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram said, in part:

It really is impossible to do justice to this delightful show by summarizing the story. Indeed, any attempt to reflect the elusive charms of the “Peanuts” people in mere words is doomed to frustration.
But at least it can be said that the TV version was remarkably true to the original. The reason undoubtedly is that creator Schulz himself prepared the script, from familiar material.
The transition from print to TV was less exact in the animation—or, as the credits grandly put it, "graphic blandishment"—than in spirit and characterization, but the drawings were quite good enough.
The mischievous wit, gentle satire and touching warmth of the story were admirably supported by interesting and well integrated original music. The use of piano and percussion only was just the right touch.
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" was shown in kiddie prime time, but I suspect the program appealed to adult viewers even more than youngsters.
In any case, it clearly was a high point on the holiday TV schedule, and I imagine Charlie Brown will be with us on the tube from now on.

Anne Miller Tinsley offered this review in the same edition:

Good grief. I was as startled last night as Charlie Brown is every day when I switched on the television set to watch Charles Schulz's animated Peanuts perform in "Charlie Brown's Christmas."
I have long been a loyal reader of Schulz's precocious moppets who gaze clear-eyed at the ferocious world around them.
But somehow I have never thought of them as kids. They're too much like too many adults.
So it struck me as extremely odd when I heard sweet, child-like voices coming out of those animated little mouths.
Although it was a highly entertaining 30 minutes, I think I get more pleasure from reading the comic strip. That way I can imagine that Lucy the fuss-budget has a shrill and flippant voice, that Linus doesn't speak with a lisp, and that Snoopy really does hum when he dances on the piano.

Our custom is to give the gift of one of the Seven Liberal Arts—music. Vince Guaraldi’s light jazz score is a beloved part of the Peanuts special. Much of it seems wintery, as opposed to Christmassy, and is enjoyable year-round. Here are some of the instrumentals you have heard over and over for years, but I’m sure you won’t mind hearing yet another time.




O TANNENBAUM


LINUS AND LUCY


CHRISTMAS TIME IS HERE


SKATING


CHRISTMAS IS COMING