What are odds that network chops the Bible reading scene
to add more commericals.....
What are odds that network chops the Bible reading scene
to add more commericals.....
I could see this show ending on networks not because of the content, but because of the nature of visual media entertainment. Who wants to tune in on a specific channel at a set time when you can watch “A Charlie Brown Christmas” almost at will on the internet and on DVD?
As a kid before cable and VHS tapes, so see a cartoon in the evening time was a wonderful thing!
That in itself showed in the ratings and at some point it just became something that let you (with great excitement of course) that CHRISTMAS WAS ALMOST HERE!!!!
And it was a good show too.
Thanks for posting this. I wanted to do so yesterday but the site was so wacky I didn’t get a chance.
If the show was made today, Linus would go off on a rant about how capitalism has ruined “the holidays”.
In 1969, I worked in the AudioVisual department of a brand spanking new high school with a wall of open reel tape decks (about 30 of them) that would broadcast on up to 5 channels into the school library via an antenna around the library.
I took a Wollensak portable open reel deck home and placed it’s mic in front of our tv speaker while the show was on. I even paused it during commercials. We then played that tape in the school library for the entire Christmas season. I was an agnostic at the time but I remember that reading by Linus as being the whole point of the show. And when he concludes it with ‘and that’s what Christmas is all about, it had a profuse impact on me to this day.
Every year I’ve watched Christmas get more and more commercial while in my life it continues to get less and less commercial. That episode has also become a condemnation of our culture as it sits now, before the fact. Back when this show was created, there was no such thing a “Black Friday”.
This is one of my favorite Christmas specials.
Hands down the best Christmas Special ever. Period.
It tops our annual Christmas watch list. We have a family tradition of watching the following (almost all on DVD now to accomodate schedules as kids have their own lives and families now):
Charlie Brown Christmas, Grinch, Rudolph, White Christmas, A Christmas Carol (Alastair Sim version), Scrooged, Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story. We then cap it off on Christmas Eve with a family dinner, then the entire family watches “It’s A Wonderful Life” followed by opening one gift before the kids and grandkids go home and we hit the bed — mom in her kerchief and I in my cap of course.
Thanksgiving day I pop that Vince Guaraldi soundtrack into the kitchen CD player, and it doesn’t come out til New Year. I never get sick of it....
Possibly the best special ever. (And for the same reasons the execs didn’t like it)
“who also supplied the voice for Snoopy.”
???
“The half-hour special aired on Thursday, December 9, 1965, preempting The Munsters and following Gilligan’s Island”
My how prime time has changed!
Thank God for Linus and the Gospel of Luke! (not in that order!)
I’ve always loved this show, and now I watch it with my sons. And the soundtrack is one of my favorites, Christmas or otherwise.
Thank you, Sparky. May your soul rest in peace. And Merry Christmas.