Posted on 12/25/2015 11:16:42 AM PST by Starman417
A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired in 1965. I loved it back then and I love it today. It spoke from the heart of Charles Schultz, innocent and genuine. It offered a lesson in simplicity, in purity- a lesson of the heart. It was one of the early broadcast tales to nudge us into focusing what was important about the holidays in general and Christmas in particular. After all the presents are opened and everything settles down, it still is what Christmas is all about.
The NY Post notes that dedicated Christmas specials are dwindling in number:
The potential trend away from more traditional holiday musical-revue specials could be because the format is simply too staid for this live-tweeting generation. Live theater adaptations have the novelty of spontaneity; we tune in as much to see who might flub his or her lines as to have our hearts warmed by the holiday hearth. And Adele is so wildly popular right now, particularly among the coveted 18-to-25 demographic, that her special promised stratospheric live viewership, regardless of its theme.Nor would I.Networks seem to be pivoting, but won’t we miss the holiday-musical revue if it disappears entirely? It’s a tradition that dates to the earliest days of TV, when Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Perry Como first initiated the Christmas-themed song, dance and comedy special in the 1950s. I, for one, wouldn’t want to lose it altogether.
The holidays are under assault. Among us are the horrifically selfish who would extinguish holidays entirely. Instead of displaying the tolerance they ask for themselves, they would rather inflict pain upon everyone else. We've become afraid to say "Merry Christmas" for fear of offending someone. Personally, I don't know a single person who is offended by it- neither Jew nor Christian nor Muslim nor Buddhist. From the day after Thanksgiving until the Christmas break my office plays Christmas music and it is a great thing having patients come in and smile upon hearing it. Our office is a safe holiday zone.
But holidays are under assault. In one school the production of a Charlie Brown Christmas play was censored to remove the segment in which Linus tells Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about.
Superintendent Tom Salyer confirmed to me that the entire passage was excised from the program after the district received a single complaint.One person ruined it for everyone. That's not right. That passage is everything. It is the message of the show. Without that segment the play means absolutely nothing.
When students have become so s that at Ivy League schools they sign petitions to curtail free speech and in others sign petition complaining that "White Christmas" is racist I am fearful that they and other sad, miserable individuals will make all of our lives devoid of holiday pleasure. The holidays are what we are as Americans. It is who are are. If we lose them- all of them- we lose who we are as a society and as a people.
But I'm not going down without a fight. So here is the Charlie Brown segment telling us what Christmas is all about.
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
Thank you for reminding me. Found it online, watching now. Just the Vince Guaraldi music alone is soothing.
I haven’t one person with me a Happy Holiday. It’s all been Merry Christmas.
Last night’s tv viewing:
ABC had 2 hours of Charlie Brown last night followed by hour of Christmas lights.
NBC aired “It’s a Wonderful Life”
Telemundo aired the 4 hour “The Holy Family”
Halmark Channel has had 24 hour non-stop Christmas movies since shortly after Thanksgiving
FOX News has Christmas shows
CW aired “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol”
TBS and TNT aired 24 hours of “A Christmas Story”
Disney Channel had on Christmas shows
FXX had “A Christmas Carol” on several times
Lifetime had Christmas movies days
MTV attempted to celebrate the season with “A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas”
NatGeo did their part by airing shows about animals in cold climates
HUB had Jesus stories
WE, Encore, HBO and Starz had on Christmas movies
PBS has had Christmas shows and for those wanting a holiday-musical revue had on Andy Williams (thinking it was PBS yesterday)
I moved out of Chicago to northern Wisconsin. Christmas is allowed up here. And we all celebrate it openly and with pride. And we think that big city folks are odd and often misguided.
I suggest it for everyone. When the world starts to get too stupid, just move to a small town. That’s where sanity still lives.
The latest Charlie Brown movie was amazing. Called “Peanuts Movie”.
I honestly had grown tired of the series (there is only so many times you can watch a cartoon), but found myself loving this new movie. It was so heartwarming and funny and they actually updated the animation to make it exciting once again. Honestly probable the best Animation movie made this year. It even had a happy ending for poor ole Charlie Brown, one that honored his Christian values of telling the truth.
"Merry Christmas, everybody!"
At businesses around here -- including Trader Joe's, go figure -- I've not once been told "happy holidays", it's been "Merry Christmas" every single time. Thanks Starman417.
Why are schools doing Charlie Brown plays?
Just asking for trouble. And then people are shocked when it shows up.
My wife and I had a very Christmas-y Christmas Eve. As a Christmas present to my grown daughter who hates dealing with car dealers, I took her 10-year-old Toyota into the local dealer service department to catch up on four recalls that she had been ignoring. Once the work had been done and before I had made it off the property, three different warning lights popped up on the dashboard. When I took it back, they reset the codes, investigated the problem, said it was a false positive on the O2 sensor, and sent me on my way. The next day, Christmas Eve, we were on our way to some last-minute shopping, when the warning lights came on again. We went back to the dealer. They spent an hour or so rechecking everything, determined that it was indeed a faulty O2 sensor — and then said that they would fix it for free.
Then we went to the Fossil store to get work done on two watches that my son hadn’t had time to deal with before he left for three years in Germany. One was a repair on a minute hand that had fallen off, and the other was a band adjustment (free) and a battery replacement (not free). Ordinarily we would have had to pay for the battery and the shipping charges on the repair, but the Christmas Spirit worked, and we got off scot-free.
Christmas is not dead.
Been a tradition in our house since it first aired, but like alot of people, got worried it wouldn’t be airing much longer.
Found a set that has the Halloween show, the Thanksgiving show, and theChristmas show in it on dvd.
Now, even if someone has to work the night they’re on, we wait and see it as a family.
So you are against free speech when it might contain a Christian message.
A Christian message in a public school?
In this day and age?
You have a touch of mental retardation don’t you.
I bet you spent time putting your finger in candle flames and wonder why you get burned.
So, a little Christian education is OK in a publicly funded school. How about a littlle Buddishm? How about Toasm? Hebrew? Wiccanism? I already know your response to Islam.
But we are talking about “just a little.”
Please tell me which ones you want to pay your taxes for.
Yes.
We are a Christian nation, you ACLU-ally.
Amazing nobody has noticed we have a solid liberal in our midst.
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