Not only will viewers be treated to a major flashback as they will be able to watch the 1965 holiday special, but there will also be a program titled “It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown”, which will also air on ABC at 9 p.m. ET. before the holiday special, NPR reports. The special will be hosted by Kristen Bell with musical performances by Kristin Chenoweth, Matthew Morrison, Sarah McLachlan, Boyz II Men, Pentatonix and pianist David Benoit.
Advertisement
It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown is airing tonight in celebration of the 50th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas being played for the first time on December 9th, 1965.
“A Charlie Brown Christmas”, a theatrical version of the beloved animated special that in turn was based on Charles Schulz’s comic strip, is the exception to the rule. You had three guys who had not done a TV special before winging it. When the show was done, Bill and I thought we had ruined Charlie Brown. “I think the themes and the emotions, you know, we all feel those things”, said Schulz. Indeed, which is why this year, as every year, Mendelson will sit down with his family to watch the Christmas special again. Mendelson commissioned a soundtrack from San Francisco jazz musician Guaraldi, who wrote, among other compositions, the classic “Linus and Lucy”.
“It’s one of those things”, Ryle said. Over the years, “Peanuts” featured numerous strips recounting the inept baseball doings of Charlie Brown’s neighborhood team, which often lost by scores like 56-0.
Like Scrooge’s encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Past, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” can take us back to the earlier Christmases in our lives.
Among those watching, as it turned out, was Schulz, the legendary “Peanuts” creator who was known for his love of baseball, especially the Giants and Mays. “But “A Charlie Brown Christmas” showed the way for everything that followed”. “But you get up the next day and you keep moving on”. Schulz’s response (via LDS Living) has gone down in history: “If we don’t do it, who will?” There was a long pause, and then he said: ‘Well maybe we should at least meet. Because there is also a lot of him in Peanuts.
ABC will mark the half-century anniversary of the special’s premiere with a music-and-memories hour at 7 p.m. Monday.
And during any viewing of A Charlie Brown Christmas this season, fans will hear that there is no laugh track, except perhaps the one they provide themselves. Charlie Brown hits a tree and is then covered by snow, with the title card “A Charlie Brown Christmas” then appearing.
In the 1966 Halloween TV special “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, Schulz even poked fun at Linus’ misplaced belief in a mystical, magical pumpkin.
It’s a minor change, to be sure – but one that helped transform the special from one cartoon character’s story into something more universal.
But 50 years ago, in the months, weeks and days before being broadcast nationally and capturing the collective hearts of hundreds of thousands of Americans from multiple generations, A Charlie Brown Christmas looked about as likely to be a smashing success as Charlie Brown kicking a football with Lucy as holder, reports USA Today.
Advertisement
Where, when and how can you catch ABC’s It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown? The trio had agreed to whip out a show to be sponsored by Coca-Cola, even though none of them had ever produced a half-hour animated special. “This is going to run for 100 years, ‘” Mendelson recalled in his biography.
