Posted on 12/25/2022 12:19:33 PM PST by Retain Mike
On Dec. 9, 1965, a young boy threw up his hands in despair and shouted, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”
“Sure, Charlie Brown,” the boy’s friend, Linus, answered. “I can tell you what Christmas is all about.”
Dragging his trademark security blanket, Linus walked to the center of the school auditorium stage, where friends were rehearsing a Christmas play.
“Lights, please,” Linus said.
A spotlight clicked on. Then Linus delivered one of the most memorable monologues in television history: an account of Christ’s birth, recited word for word from the Gospel of Luke. It lasted a solid minute.
CBS beamed A Charlie Brown Christmas into roughly half the viewing homes in America. Every year since, families across the nation and around the world have adopted the beloved television special into their own Christmas traditions.
(Excerpt) Read more at wng.org ...
I’m listening to the soundtrack right now. Sweet and humble and brings back great memories of a more innocent age and a long gone America. Prayers up for its return, in some form.
TV network didn’t want the Gospel of Luke passage.
Schulz said he doesn’t do the show if it’s not in.
That's what the Deep Snake wants everyone to think. I mean it sure looks bad out there, right?
Eh, even a blind man can see evil these days. Takes no vision at all. But the light is there for those who are willing to take a little time to look, even as they are accused [by the Dark Side] of having their heads in the sand.
Take heart and God Bless America, with a Merry Christmas to all!
Ping
The soundtrack IS Christmas. So beautiful & yet melancholy too. I always cry at Linus’ speech.
Didn’t know that. Surprised because that was back in non woke times.
They also hated that real kid's voice actors were used, that there was no laugh-track, and of course the quoting of Scripture by Linus. All of these things Charles Schultz (a former Sunday school teacher) insisted on. Since the whole thing was made in about three months and the network had already committed advertising to it in TV Guide and other places, it went on as planned. They just knew it would bomb, but it turned out otherwise.
Thanks! So glad Shultz stood firm. Everything about it is beautiful: funny, sweet, tender, heartbreaking....all wrapped up in a bowl.
Bow
I always liked CB getting the littlest tree. I was a Boy Scout whose troop payed for everyone to go to summer camp by selling Christmas trees from Thanksgiving weekend until Christmas eve. After the CB Christmas special, we sold a lot of small trees the next year. 7-9 foot was our favorite selling size, then it became 3-5 feet. We always gave the church that sponsored our troop several trees, including the biggest tree that came on the truck. That was the great thing about our troop, it wasn’t about whose family had money, It was about all of us busting butt to make sure we could take the whole troop to camp. And for new troop members that didn’t seem to have money, the scoutmasters could always find uniforms in the lost and found box that seemed to fit the new guys. J.C. Penney even had a scout section in the store that had Boy Scouts Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Brownie uniforms and equipment like tents, hatchets, knives, compasses, handbooks, merit badge books, backpacks, and sleeping bags. That was when stores cared about their customers.
I remember those days. I was so excited to go to JC Penney to get my first Cub Scout uniform. They had a whole section in the store just for BSA and GSA. And those were the days when we wore the whole uniform, not just the shirt. I thought I was really something else.
Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!
By the time Linus got to that line, he had notably and deliberately/timely dropped his security blanket. Only to casually pick it back up again after the end of the soliloquy. Subtle but powerful point made!
Augustus Caesar (27 BCE - 14 CE) was the name of the first
and, by most accounts, greatest Roman emperor. Augustus was
born Gaius Octavius Thurinus on 23 September 63 BCE. Octavian
was adopted by his great-uncle Julius Caesar in 44 BCE, and then
took the name Gaius Julius Caesar. In 27 BCE the Senate awarded
him the honorific Augustus (”the illustrious one”), and he was then
known as Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus.
https://www.worldhistory.org/augustus/
I am glad you noticed that. It was a very subtle yet effective scene. Last year at church I reenacted Linus reciting that scripture. And I also carried a security blanket and dropped it right at the moment he said “Fear Not…”
No wonder Schulz demanded that the scene be kept in for broadcast.
Even the idea of Linus getting up onstage alone to deliver the soliloquy was jarring, given his notoriously tremulous character.
The prop of the security blanket, and the way it was used in the scene, together pointed directly at the reason Linus was so surprisingly brave enough to do what he did.
By extension, the fictitious and never-seen Mr. And Mrs. Van Pelt can be seen as very good parents to Linus and Lucy (although Lucy’s overall behavior toward poor Charlie Brown might suggest otherwise!).
Guessing that in an overwhelmingly protestant country, the Van Pelt family were down low devout Catholics. Once again, Lucy’s excessive fascination with psychiatry and therapy arguably provide a counterpoint to this surmise!
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