A Charlie Brown Christmas / YMMV

Adaptation Displacement: Well, maybe not entirely, but mention the name "Charlie Brown" to many people today and it's a good bet that this special (and/or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) will be the first thing they think of, rather than the Peanuts strip itself.
Aluminum Christmas Trees:
- The Trope Namer, of sorts (technically the namer would be actual aluminum Christmas trees). The special's lampooning of them is partly credited with their disappearance by the 1970s. Other than their mention here, they've been so utterly forgotten that most viewers born after 1960 think it's something made up for the show. But they were real.^note
  Linus: (awed) It boggles the mind.
- The dances the kids do are all more or less real Dance Sensation moves from The '60s. Violet is doing a really stiff version of the Watusi, while Linus and Sally are basically doing the Pony, and the twin girls 3 and 4 might be doing the Mashed Potato.
- The sound Snoopy makes after Lucy overreacts to being kissed by him might seem like random silliness, since it is so unlike the resonant yodel usually associated with his breed. However, beagles really do occasionally make this noise when exasperated or annoyed.
And You Thought It Would Fail: Sums up the initial thoughts of the network before the special aired. The creators as well — when Charles Schulz, Lee Mendelson, and Bill Meléndez saw the final cut for the first time, they thought this would be the last animation Peanuts would ever do. Boy, were they wrong!
Anvilicious: The special drops the "consumerism is bad" message hard and directly quotes the Gospel of Luke to tell the True Meaning of Christmas. Themes that are still persistent today and which this kind of narration makes easy to understand for everyone.
Awesome Music: Vince Guaraldi's soundtrack qualifies from beginning to end. Many people have credited it as their first exposure to jazz. "Linus and Lucy" (which technically predated the special) is particularly catchy, and became the iconic Peanuts tune, to the point that it's the official Theme Song for the franchise in all but name.
Crosses the Line Twice: Charlie Brown accidentally killing the tree by putting a single decoration on it.
First Installment Wins:
- This special and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, released a year later, still reign as by far the most popular Peanuts specials, to the point where some people aren't aware just how many others have been made (there are dozens).
- Even with regard to Christmas Specials alone, Peanuts has done three more, but none of them even come close in popularity to A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Harsher in Hindsight: Charlie Brown's depression now feels this way once you know that his voice actor, Peter Robbins, struggled with mental health as an adult, and sadly took his own life in January 2022.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- In one part, Charlie Brown makes Lucy fly backwards through the air with his loudly proclaiming "THAT'S IT!" 46 years later, we got a computer game that allows you to do the same.
- Shermy's dance is ahead of its time, as people note he's doing "The Running Man".
- Lucy dismissing Ludwig van Beethoven because he "never got his picture on a bubblegum card". Baseball card giant Topps' quirky Allen & Ginter line of cards, which mixes retro-style player cards with cards featuring various historical figures, did indeed produce a Beethoven trading card in 2009.
- When asked by Lucy what he'll do with his blanket when he grows up, Linus says he'll consider making it into a sport coat. In the very next Peanuts animated special, Charlie Brown's All Stars!, Charlie Brown's baseball team take Linus' blanket and stitch it into Charlie Brown's manager uniform.
Memetic Mutation:
- In the dance sequence, see that kid in the orange shirt with spiky hair in front of Linus? That's "5". Given that he wasn't very notable even in the comic strip ^note, most people know him just for that dance he's doing. You know the one. Taken mainstream when the cast of Scrubs made a Gag Dub of the special.
- The dance sequence was also the basis of an early YouTube hit where it was paired with OutKast's "Hey Ya".
Misaimed Merchandising:
- In the original broadcast, there were plugs for Coca-Cola in opening and closing credits… in a show that protests the commercialization of Christmas. ^note
- Since Coca-Cola commissioned the show to begin with, the anti-commercialization theme could be considered Biting The Hand Fridge Brilliance.
- ...And now, you can decorate your entire house with Peanuts-themed Christmas merchandise, including an entire line of plastic figures recreating those deeply spiritual moments from this special, including a life-size version of the famous tree.
Narm Charm:
- Some of the children providing the voices were too young to understand their lines, resulting in the classic awkward delivery that later became a staple of all Peanuts specials. Most notable with the little girl who played Sally; she couldn't read and had to be fed her lines one at a time.
- This could also be Fridge Brilliance: when Sally says "All I want is what I have coming to me, all I want is my fair share", she sounds very forced but that could very well be because she's parroting something she heard an adult say. You can also hear her stutter when she says the line.
- Similarly, the show's tiny budget and extremely compressed production schedule led to some notoriously sloppy Limited Animation, particularly when the kids are dancing, which is affectionately regarded by fans. The sponsors offered to have it spruced up after it became a hit, but Schulz turned them down, saying it was fine as-is (though that never stopped him from pointing out its flaws, and Mendelson and Melendez actually went back and did a re-edit before its second airing in 1966).
Not So Crazy Anymore: The joke about Sally asking Santa for "tens and twenties" has dated rather poorly due to inflation. Granted, even in the new millennium that's still rather a lot of money to give to a child Sally's age, but you need to imagine that she's asking for hundreds to translate the sheer excess to the present day. ^note
Older Than They Think:
- This isn't the first time the Peanuts characters were seen in animated form. The earliest, animated appearance of Charlie Brown and friends was in a series of commercials for Ford that began in 1959 till sometime in 1962. Also between 1959 and 1961, Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the other characters would appear on "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show"/"The Ford Show" to introduce the host.
- This was neither Vince Guaraldi's first participation in a Peanuts filmed adaptation: his first work was for the previous and unsold documentary, A Boy Named Charlie Brown in 1963. In fact, his signature creation, "Linus and Lucy," was created for that film. While the documentary didn't air, "Linus and Lucy" had been already been heard on national television almost a year before this special debuted; it was one of several songs that Guaraldi recorded with his trio at KQED-TV in San Francisco in the late summer of 1964, which were used as filler at the end of episodes of an imported British TV series of anthologized Guy de Maupassant stories that KQED distributed to NET, the forerunner of PBS.
Sacred Cow: The special is very well-liked and celebrated and anyone who loves this special will defend it from any detractor in a heartbeat.
Signature Scene:
- The kids dancing repetitively to "Christmas Is Coming".
- Linus's Bible monologue.
- Everyone singing "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" at the very end.
Special Effect Failure: During the psychiatric booth scene, close-ups on Lucy reveal that she's phasing through the booth.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The soundtrack by Vince Guaraldi Trio. In 2006, the album was reissued with slightly extended cuts of "O Tannenbaum", "Christmas Time Is Here (instrumental)" and "Skating"; and both "Linus and Lucy" and "Christmas Is Coming" were replaced with slightly different alternate takes that were actually used in the animated special (though record label Concord did decide the inclusion of the lattermost was an actual mistake). Concord offered to replace the album at no cost, and reverted back to the original version of the album shortly thereafter.
Tough Act to Follow: There have been, to date, three other Peanuts Christmas-themed TV specials after this one (It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales, and I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown), but they all lurk in the shadow of this one since it has become so widely known and celebrated. It's telling that the second of those aired to fill up the remaining hour of airings from 2002 to 2019, yet most people wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about if you were to bring it up. It's Christmastime Again usually gets included with DVDs of the original.
Unintentional Period Piece: Lucy mentioning how Beethoven was never featured on bubblegum cards is meant to show how much she isn't aware of Beethoven, but in modern times, it also shows how behind the times she is. As not only are bubblegum cards usually referred to as "trading cards" today, most stopped being packaged with gum, starting in the early 90's.
Values Dissonance:
- The overt biblical message might be a little uncomfortable or unwelcoming for those who celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday. CBS actually worried about this at the time. By 1965, Christmas was already largely secularized, especially on television, so one of their major complaints about the special was in fact Linus's Bible recitation; they feared a backlash from the less-religious (as well as some religious people who felt that a largely comedic cartoon wasn't an appropriate format to teach the importance of religion).
- Getting an artificial tree for the holidays is presented as just another example of tacky commercialism at work. These days, eco-conscious people are more likely to use artificial trees because they'd rather not kill a defenseless tree every year, or support the operations that grow and harvest them en masse^note, just so it can shed needles all over their living room for a couple of weeks. Natural trees also require plenty of maintenance, needing water to be kept alive and attention as they are highly flammable. This is also influenced by the half-century-plus remove from how kitschy the artificial trees of the 1960s in question could be.
Values Resonance:
- The shots at holiday commercialization, and the presentation of the Biblical True Meaning of Christmas, have only become more relevant in an era in which the subject of secularizing Christmas is a hot-button cultural and political issue.
- Now that we know more about depression, and, in particular, how it can get worse around the holiday season, Charlie Brown's state of mind at the start of the special is more poignant than ever. Especially now that more people are aware that it's not so uncommon — a lot of people can probably relate to what Charlie Brown's going through.
The Woobie: Charlie Brown as always, but also his tree. No wonder he chooses that one. A 2005 tribute album to the special and its music includes a new song, written by David Benoit and Lee Mendelson and sung by Vanessa Williams, called "Just Like Me". It's basically Charlie Brown's thoughts when he picks up the tree, except set to sad music. And honestly, the lyrics are ridiculously depressing.
Hello little tree...
Kinda looks like me,
Standing all alone,
Sorta like it's been disowned...

YMMV / A Charlie Brown Christmas

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