Growing up Jewish, I didn’t have a lot of Christmas specials lying around the house. But Growing up American, I saw an awful lot of them on TV. A Charlie Brown Christmas was one of the few that didn’t make me feel weird and queasy and somehow excluded from a giant party. That could be because it’s not a hard sell on the total perfection of Christmas (see: almost every Christmas special since) but rather a quiet, reflective movie. It could also just be because I loved Peanuts.
My favorite Peanuts special of all, though, was It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and I was pretty excited to dig into this collection. This box set contains both aforementioned films and A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, with all three coming both on Blu-ray and DVD. I had remembered the simple animation and the soft-but-not-quite-smooth jazz, but I hadn’t remembered just how much of these specials are more or less dialogue free.
A Charlie Brown Christmas, released in 1965, was (and remains) a huge hit. It came out at the height of Peanuts’ popularity, but also marked the transition Peanuts made from a comic strip about kids into a comic strip for kids, as the focus shifted from the tribulations of perpetual doormat Charlie Brown to the cute cartoony hijinks of Snoopy the beagle. A Charlie Brown Christmas’ most lasting cultural contribution is its music. Not only does it debut the infectious classic Peanuts theme “Linus and Lucy”, but also one of the most melancholic and beautiful modern Christmas carols, “Christmastime is Here”, both the biggest legacies of composer Vince Guaraldi.
The story, which you probably know so well, follows Charlie Brown, who is not in the Christmas spirit. Instead, Christmas rather depresses him. The Peanuts gang asks him to direct the Christmas play, but, good grief, he messes it up with a subpar Christmas tree. Does Linus quote Luke to remind everyone that Christmas is about love and peace, and finally give Charlie Brown some emotional closure? Sorry, no spoilers here.
In It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, (1966) Linus spends all of Halloween in a pumpkin patch, waiting for his personal Santa Claus, The Great Pumpkin, to emerge and give him gifts, while the gang goes Trick or Treating and attends a Halloween party. What makes these two specials such classics is their sincere, quiet simplicity, and their subtle yet sharp, parodic humor. The films capture that warm, family feeling that the Holidays are theoretically all about (and the evocation of which is used to sell so many TVs and toys and clothes and appliances every year.) They’re genuine and calm. For example, Linus is convinced that the Great Pumpkin will appear to him because he is in “the most sincere pumpkin patch” possible.
But its not all smiles and candy canes. The kids, particularly the girls, are genuinely cruel to Charlie Brown. The bullying, entrepreneurial future CEO Lucy keeps tricking him and putting him down. And the philosophical Linus plays against the crass, consumerist excesses of Snoopy (yes, seriously, that’s how he’s portrayed in these early specials.) These mean, flawed, weird kids make the adultless world of the Peanuts feel full and real.
Unfortunately, by A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) that charm is significantly lessened, replaced with an overcooked plot about Peppermint Patty and over reliant on Snoopy and Woodstock. Of course, it’s still a lovely breath of fresh air when compared to many modern kids’ cartoons, but its definitely not on the level of the other two films. It doesn’t quite have that classic, timeless quality of the other two. Still, it fits as a lesser member of the holiday trilogy.
Blu-ray Bonus Features
These discs also feature three extra episodes, It’s Magic, Charlie Brown (1981), The Mayflower Voyagers (1988) and It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown (1992), all three solidly mediocre. The discs do, however, feature great, fifteen minute making of vignettes, with interviews from animator/director Bill Melendez, producer Lee Mendelson, Schultz’ widow, Jean, and son, Monte, and some of the voice actors from the specials. Also included is a 50¢ coupon for frozen pretzels, which is definitely the strangest special feature I’ve ever seen.
The visual quality on the Blu-ray is high, and the treatment and menus are nice, but all told there is only 3 hours of video content: this could definitely have been done in one disc, but instead you’re getting (and paying for) six.
"Peanuts Deluxe Holiday Collection" is on sale November 16, 2010 and is not rated. Animation, Children & Family. Directed by Bill Melendez. Written by Charles Shultz. Starring Peter Robbins, Sally Dryer.
