Tonight is the 40th anniversary broadcast of A Charlie Brown Christmas. While it's traditional today, it was really quite novel when it premiered in 1965: Children did the voices of the characters instead of voice artists and Schultz touched on some of the real feelings about Christmas rather than going for slapstick humor and wildly exaggerated characters.
And of course there is the famous Bible passage that unnerved the executives at CBS.
The Vince Guaraldi score was inspired; it made the story timeless and is as much a part of it as the characters and the situation. Can you imagine the story done to a Hanna-Barbera-—or worse yet, Filmation-—type score?
Did you know you can buy a "Charlie Brown tree" this year? I saw it in last Sunday's newspaper. You get a scrawny, bent-over pine tree and a single red ornament. Here's the link at Urban Outfitters. (They seem to be sold out.)
You know, I've always wanted a sound clip of Violet saying "Oh, no, we're doomed." What a great comment to accompany opening Windows every morning! (Or at least Microslop Word—or even worse, Microslop Access...)
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