'A Charlie Brown Christmas' 50th Anniversary: 50 Things to Know About the Classic TV Special
It’s the TV Christmas special by which all others are measured. No doubt about it, A Charlie Brown Christmas surprised everyone when it made its debut on Dec. 9, 1965 on CBS — including its creators.
The Yuletide classic, inspired by Charles M. Schulz’s popular Peanuts comic strip, wasn’t initially well-received by network execs when it debuted in 1965. Fast forward five decades and a whole lot of airings later, and A Charlie Brown Christmas celebrates its 50th anniversary with two primetime airings and a full-scale network special that will pay tribute to its longevity. To get you ready, we’ve come up with 50 facts about the beloved animated special, some that even diehard Charlie Brown fans may not know.
1. A Charlie Brown Christmas has a Mad Men connection.
Madison Avenue ad agency McCann Erickson was looking to develop a TV special during the 1965 holiday season for its client, Coca-Cola, and an exec ultimately pitched the idea of a Charlie Brown Christmas special to TV producer Lee Mendelson. Mad Men fans know McCann Erickson as the rival agency that bought out Sterling Cooper midway through the AMC series, and the events of Season 4 take place during 1965, the same year the real-life agency was involved with A Charlie Brown Christmas.
2. Director Bill Melendez had no idea what to set the production budget at.
Animator and director Bill Melendez had never budgeted a film longer than 30 seconds. He was given a budget of $76,000 for A Charlie Brown Christmas, but the special ended up costing close to $96,000 to make.
3. CBS originally wanted an hour-long special.
Melendez talked the network down to a half hour because he thought an hour of animation would be too hard on the eyes.
4. Lee Mendelson insisted on using real kids for the voices
Mendelson was set on using real kids to voice the Peanuts characters, many of them without any acting experience. In fact, he hired the inexperienced children of several family friends and neighbors to voice the roles. “We decided we should use real children, which was, I think, the first time that had ever been done,” he told Time.
5. Sally couldn’t read the script.
Mendelson’s neighbor and family friend Kathy Steinberg was only six years old when she was chosen as the voice for Charlie Brown’s little sis, Sally. Steinberg later revealed she and several other cast members didn’t know how to read the script, so Melendez fed them the lines one by one. Recording of Sally’s scenes had to be rushed because Steinberg had a loose tooth and the director was afraid she would talk with a lisp if it came out.
6. Snoopy was the only adult voice.
After a tough sell to Schulz, Melendez provided the voice of Snoopy in the 1965 special, and he continued to make Snoopy’s sounds for more than 40 years. To create the sounds for Snoopy, Melendez uttered gibberish and his voice was speeded up by an engineer.
7. Charles Schulz insisted on a scene of Biblical proportions.
One of the most famous scenes in A Charlie Brown Christmas features Linus reciting scripture from the New Testament. Mendelson told the The Washington Post that Peanuts creator Charles Schulz was adamant about including the biblical text in the script, saying, “If we don’t do it, who will?” Mendelson later called Linus’s reading from the Gospel of Luke “the most magical two minutes in all of TV animation.”
8. Linus’s Christmas speech appeared in a later Peanuts comic strip.
A revised translation of Linus’s "true meaning of Christmas” speech made an appearance in a Peanuts Sunday comic strip one year after the TV special was first broadcast. The strip was dated Dec. 18, 1966.
9. Laugh tracks were no laughing matter to Schulz.
While laugh tracks were standard for TV animation back in the day, Schulz insisted that the show was to be produced without a laugh track. The Peanuts creator strongly believed people didn’t need to be told when to laugh.
10. Mendelson got the idea for Charlie Brown’s tree from a fairy tale.
The executive producer read Hans Christian Andersen’s The Fir Tree to his children just before working on the special, and it spawned the idea for Charlie Brown’s tiny tree.
11. The special was barely finished in time for its Dec. 9, 1965 premiere.
Once A Charlie Brown Christmas was commissioned, Schulz, Mendelson, and Melendez had less than six months to produce the entire special. It was completed just one week shy of its national broadcast debut.
12. CBS executives hated the finished product.
When A Charlie Brown Christmas was screened for CBS executives, the general consensus was that it was a flop. “They didn’t get the voices. They didn’t get the music. They didn’t get the pacing,” Mendelson said. Execs told the creators it would likely be the last Peanuts special ever, and the network only aired it because it was already on the schedule for the next week.
13. Coke had a cameo in the original broadcast.
Despite its anti-commercialism message, the first version of A Charlie Brown Christmas boasted two Coca-Cola references. Coke’s sponsorship was mentioned in the closing credits, and there was even product placement in the opening sequence, when Snoopy hurled Linus head-on into a sign advertising the soft drink. Coke’s sponsorship of the program ended in 1967, and for subsequent airings, the soda sign was replaced with one that read “Danger.”
14. The iconic Peanuts theme song was originally written by Vince Guaraldi for a documentary.
One of the highlights of A Charlie Brown Christmas is the soundtrack performed by jazz composer Vince Guaraldi. In 1963, Mendelson worked with Guaraldi on a documentary about Charles Schulz and Charlie Brown, but the project never sold. Guaraldi went on to use one of the documentary’s piano pieces — the famous “Linus and Lucy” instrumental — in the TV special, and it remains the Peanuts gang’s signature song.
15. The lyrics to “Christmas Time Is Here” were written in minutes.
The special show’s opening song, “Christmas Time Is Here,” was originally written as an instrumental by Guaraldi, but Mendelson decided to add words. The producer wrote the lyrics as a poem on the back of an envelope in 10 minutes.
16. The members of the children’s choir hired to sing the show-ending carol were paid peanuts.
After Guaraldi commissioned a group of children’s choir singers, it took three recording sessions to record “Christmas Time is Here,” “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and the show-ending shout-out, “Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!” The late-night sessions took place at Fantasy Records in San Francisco, and the kids were paid a mere $5 for each session.
17. It’s no mistake that “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” is a little off key.
Mendelson and Guaraldi purposely used a version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” that was slightly out of tune, because they wanted it to sound like real kids.
18. Shermy only had one line in the entire special.
Shermy was a regular character in the early days of the Peanuts newspaper strip, yet he only had one line in the Christmas special. When assigned a role in the Christmas play, Shermy said, “Every Christmas, it’s the same. I always end up playing a shepherd.” The nondescript character (who looked like a taller Linus) was axed from the Peanuts newspaper strip four years later.
19. Lucy dropped the Brown.
The special marks the only time Lucy ever calls Charlie Brown by just his first name. In the scene where she tells him that Christmas is really a racket run by an Eastern syndicate, Lucy starts off by saying, “Look, Charlie…”
20. A few animation mistakes slipped through the cracks.
Eagle-eyed viewers have noted Charlie Brown’s scrawny Christmas tree had three branches on it when he first picked it out, but in later scenes it had more. In addition, the wording on Lucy’s psychiatry booth changes within one scene.
21. The special features one of the most bizarre Peanuts characters of all time.
One of the most unusual Peanuts characters in the 1960s was a boy named “555 95472,” or “5” for short. The character was first introduced in a 1963 strip, when he explained that his father renamed the entire family as a series of digits because he felt people were seen as just a number. 5 and his sisters 3 and 4 all appear in the famous dance sequence in A Charlie Brown Christmas. 5 is the spiky-haired kid wearing the orange shirt, and 3 and 4 are the twin girls in purple dresses.
22. The special marks the only time Schroeder’s toy piano sounds like a toy piano.
The blonde piano prodigy gives Lucy three versions of “Jingle Bells” in the special: First, in the style of a conventional piano, then in the style of a Hammond organ, and finally, a one-finger rendition which sounds like a toy piano. It is the only time in the history of the television specials that Schroeder’s toy piano ever sounded like a toy.
23. The Beethoven composition Schroder plays in the special is…
Für Elise
24. Snoopy got most of the action for a reason.
Melendez said Charlie Brown was hard to animate due to the character’s big head and tiny arms. But Snoopy’s physique made it easy to portray him doing everything from dancing atop a piano to impersonating a vulture.
25. The original TV broadcast scored big numbers.
The Charlie Brown Christmas broadcast in 1965 preempted the CBS Thursday nighttime slot normally occupied by The Munsters. More than 15 million viewers, close to half the American TV audience, tuned in to CBS to watch the special, and only Bonanza beat it in the ratings.
26. Charlie Brown finally won something.
Fifteen years after the world was introduced to perpetual loser Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Christmas won a prestigious Peabody Award and the 1966 Emmy Award for Outstanding Children’s Program. While accepting the trophy, Charles Schulz joked, “Charlie Brown is not used to winning, so we thank you.”
27. The aluminum tree industry took a hit.
1960s-era aluminum trees were a symbol of commercialism in A Charlie Brown Christmas (Charlie Brown ignores Lucy’s advice to buy a big pink one), and the special has been partially blamed for the demise of gaudy fake trees. Sales tapered off and aluminum trees pretty much disappeared from the marketplace by the early 1970s.
28. Puberty ended original the Charlie Brown’s voiceover career.
Peter Robbins provided the voice of Charlie Brown in the 1965 Christmas classic, as well as several more Peanuts specials. The child actor ultimately moved on from the role at age 14 when his voice started changing, but the character stayed close to his heart; as an adult Robbins got a Charlie Brown tattoo and he even had a dog named Snoopy. Sadly, Robbins recently pled guilty to making criminal threats against a sheriff and a mobile park manager, and he faces up to four years and eight months in prison when he’s sentenced in December.
29. Lucy had a creepy role.
Lucy Van Pelt was voiced by 10-year-old Tracy Stratford in the special. But Stratford isn’t just known as the voice of Linus’s bossy big sis. She also played the doll-toting little girl, Christie Streator, in the iconic Twilight Zone episode “Living Doll.” (You know, that super creepy episode with Talky Tina?)
30. A Charlie Brown Christmas was such a hit that CBS ordered two more Peanuts specials the following year.
Charlie Brown’s All-Stars and It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown debuted on the network in 1966.
31. The classic Christmas special switched networks after 34 years.
CBS aired A Charlie Brown Christmas annually from 1965 through 1999. In 2000, ABC began airing the special, and it currently airs twice during the holiday season.
32. Peanuts collided with some psychedelic rockers.
Rock band Jefferson Airplane was recording in the studio next to the Charlie Brown Christmas cast, and they came over and asked the child actors for their autographs. Of the rock star run-in, Sally Dryer, who voiced Violet, said, “We were excited about seeing them and they were excited about seeing us.”
33. The special’s signature song has been covered by… everyone.
“Christmas Time Is Here,” the soundtrack song written by Lee Mendelson and Vince Guaraldi, has been covered by everyone from Tony Bennett to LeAnn Rimes to… John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John?
34. Three lesser-known Charlie Brown Christmas specials have been produced.
It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown debuted on CBS in 1992, while Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales and I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown aired on ABC in 2002 and 2003, respectively.
35. The soundtrack is considered one of the greatest Christmas albums of all time.
In 2012, Rolling Stone named the “Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack the fourth greatest Christmas album of all time, behind “James Brown’s Funky Christmas,” “Elvis Presley’s Christmas Album,” and the 1961 album “A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Specter.”
36. The soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas was part of an eclectic group of “inductees” to the Library of Congress Music Registry.
In 2012, the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s classic Christmas soundtrack was chosen for The Library of Congress Music Registry. Other recordings chosen for “cultural, artistic, and/or historical importance” that year included an 1888 Edison Talking Doll Cylinder and the Grateful Dead’s Cornell University concert from 1977.
37. A Charlie Brown Christmas was the first of nearly 50 Peanuts specials.
The Peanuts TV movies touched on almost every holiday — there’s even an Arbor Day one.
38. But it wasn’t the first time the Peanuts characters were animated for television.
While A Charlie Brown Christmas was the characters’ first TV special, the Peanuts gang actually starred in a series of Ford commercials in the early 1960s.
39. Speaking of cars, the Peanuts special once sold for peanuts with a fill-up.
In 1991, Shell gas stations offered the VHS tape of the special for $3.99 with an 8-gallon fill-up.
40. Jim Morrison was a fan of the special.
Doors frontman Jim Morrison reportedly loved A Charlie Brown Christmas, especially the Linus character. In an interview with Noblemania, Stephen Shea, the brother of the late Christopher Shea (the child actor who voiced Linus), said his brother met the president of the Doors fan club at summer camp, and when Morrison found out he arranged for the Sheas to be his guest at a Doors concert. “Jim thought that was really cool — Linus was his favorite character and he said he wanted to meet this guy,” Shea said. “My dad got a photography pass and shot all these photos. I have all these unseen photographs… I love this connection between Peanuts and the Doors.”
41. There was a Charlie Brown Christmas flash mob in the middle of New York City.
In 2013, a group of Peanuts fans recreated the famous dance party scene with a flash mob in New York City. There was even a giant Snoopy.
42. Peter Robbins had another comic strip-related role.
In 1968, the Charlie Brown voice actor brought another comic strip character to life when he played Blondie and Dagwood’s son Alexander Bumstead on the short-lived Blondie TV series.
43. Christopher Shea was a guest star in another classic Christmas episode.
One year after A Charlie Brown Christmas, Linus voice actor Christopher Shea appeared with Marlo Thomas in the That Girl episode “Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid.”
44. Rugrats spoofed A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Nickelodeon ran A Charlie Brown Christmas parody starring the characters from Rugrats. The vignette was titled "A Chuckie Finster Christmas, Channukah, Kwaanza, Winter Solstice,” and it featured a despondent Chuckie in the Charlie Brown role, with Tommy Pickles spoofing Linus’s recitation of Luke 2:8-14. And it’s probably not hard to figure out who filled the Lucy role.
45. Before VCR and DVR there was only one way to enjoy A Charlie Brown Christmas year-round.
In 1965, The World Publishing Company published a picture book adaption of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Before the home video era, those without the book would have to wait a full year to see the Peanuts special again.
46. The special received a stamp of approval from the USPS.
In October 2015, the iconic TV special was immortalized via a set of “Forever” postage stamps. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, and the whole ice skatin’ gang are featured on the stamps, which, incidentally, cost 49 cents each today, as opposed to 5 cents in 1965.
47. It’s the second longest-running animated Christmas special in TV history.
Sorry, Charlie, but Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer debuted in 1964, beating the Peanuts gang by one year.
48. Before A Charlie Brown Christmas, animator Bill Melendez worked on some of Disney’s most iconic movies.
Melendez was an animator on some of the greatest Walt Disney Productions features of the 1940s, including Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi. He once said his collaboration with Schulz worked because he didn’t try to “Disney-fy” the Peanuts characters.
49. The story was immortalized at the Macy’s Parade.
A Charlie Brown Christmas was represented at the 89th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade with the debut of a float that featured Charlie Brown’s famous Christmas tree and Snoopy’s ornately decorated dog house. The 2015 parade marked Snoopy’s 39th appearance in the holiday procession.
50. Very few cels from the animated special are in existence today.
It took 40,000 animation cels to make A Charlie Brown Christmas, but few remain after fire ravaged Schulz’s art studio in 1966. The original cels that survived the fire were later donated to the Charles M. Schulz Museum by a childhood friend of Schulz’s son, Craig, who recovered the rare cels from the studio after the blaze.
It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown airs ahead of the annual airings of A Charlie Brown Christmas on Monday, Nov. 30. and Thursday, Dec. 24 at 8 p.m. on ABC.
