Tonight is the annual showing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on network TV. The show was quite a breakthrough when it first aired in 1965, which is something I couldn’t fully appreciate until I became an adult.
Schulz makes an unabashed plug for his Christian faith and The New Testament, and I would be disingenuous if I claimed it never had an influence on me. He also offers another message, which is IT’S OK TO BE DEPRESSED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON.
Click here here to go to the gallery to see an adaptation of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” published by Family Circle magazine in 1977. Be sure to click “full” to enlarge the images.
Vince Guaraldi’s music for “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is the subject of a feature on NPR that can be heard by clicking here.
Just what is “graphic blandishment,” anyway?
I’m nothing if not painstaking with this stuff. Whatever you see there is what it really is. In fact, if you watch it again you’ll see the image darken a little when the credits are inserted over the cartoon.
Now THAT picture looks better. I must have had my color tuned goofy, because I realized that most of the indoor backgrounds on last night’s show were a lurid deep PINK! What’s up with THAT? Remember that excited/sad moment when we realized it would “be another whole year before we saw it again?” I always loved how when Pigpen took a breath between notes, the dirt would fall off him.