Special Episode: A Charlie Brown Christmas! - From the Vault - Unpacking Peanuts

Episode Transcript
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VO (00:06):
Welcome to Unpacking Peanuts, the podcast where three cartoonists take an in-depth look at the greatest comic strip of all time, Peanuts by Charles M.
Schulz.

Jimmy (00:24):
Hey everybody, welcome back to the show.
It's Unpacking Peanuts.
We have a little holiday treat for you today, a special remastered version of our Christmas episode where we discuss the legendary holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Harold, I know this is a centerpiece of your Peanuts love.
Tell us about what we're about to hear.

Harold (00:44):
Well, we went into the history of how we got to this special.
It's 15 years into Charles Schulz's run of the 50-year Peanuts strip, and there's a lot of history of Schulz dealing with a lot of these issues and adding scriptural references, which was unusual in comics at the time.

(01:07):
And Schulz really, it was just a part of who he was.
And I just gave a presentation, actually, on a Charlie Brown Christmas a couple nights ago.
And I was thinking about how the culmination of all these things that Schulz was, even the outside comics that he was drawing for his church denomination, which then were so popular that they were syndicated all over the world in these other denomination publications.

(01:36):
People started to know him in a different way, even outside of Peanuts.
And then all of it just kind of comes to a head when he has the opportunity to make a Christmas special.
And he said, well, if I want to do a Christmas special, let's do it about Christmas.
So I was marveling at how all of these different pieces of his life kind of come together in this special.

Jimmy (01:56):
It's a classic for sure.
One of my favorite things, I often say it's probably my favorite half hour of television, Michael, you still have not seen it.

Michael (02:05):
Nope, seen bits and pieces.

Jimmy (02:07):
All right.
So now sit back and enjoy this special remastered edition of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
It was one of the most fun ones to record and I hope you guys have fun listening to it.
So whatever you're celebrating, make it be jolly and merry and happy and full of lightness and love.
And we will see you real soon.

(02:27):
Hey everybody, welcome to the show.
It's Unpacking Peanuts.
It's the podcast that is not only getting too commercial, it is getting too dangerous.
We are so happy to have you here today because today we are discussing the 30 or so strips that were adapted into the seminal and classic animated special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.

(02:49):
Now don't worry if you're not a Christmas enthusiast, or if you're the world's biggest enthusiast, it doesn't matter.
If you start celebrating in April, or if you've never jingled a bell in your life, you are welcome here to talk about our favorite thing, Charles Schulz and his fantastic comic strip, Peanuts.
I hope you're having a good holidays, whichever holidays you celebrate.

(03:11):
I'm Jimmy Gownley, I'm one of your hosts for this evening.
I'm the cartoonist of Amelia Rules, The Dumbest Idea Ever and Seven Good Reasons Not to Grow Up.
Joining me as always are my pals, co-hosts and fellow cartoonists.
He's a playwright and a composer, both for the Van Complicated People, as well as for this very podcast.
He's the co-creator of the original comic book Price Guide, the original editor for Amelia Rules and the cartoonist behind such great creations as Strange Attractors, A Gathering of Spells and Tangled River.

(03:40):
It's Michael Cohen.

Michael (03:41):
Hey there.

Jimmy (03:42):
And he's the executive producer and writer of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a former vice president of Archie Comics and the current creator of the Instagram strip, Sweetest Beasts, it's Harold Buchholz.
Hello, guys, I'm very happy to be with you today.
So we could talk about one of my favorite things, which is A Charlie Brown Christmas.
I know for Harold and I, it's one of our favorite, if not our very favorite episode of television ever, Michael has never seen it at all, which is okay because he's the peanuts purist on this podcast.

(04:14):
So what we're going to do, just like we did for The Great Pumpkin, our super listener, Joshua Stauffer, has compiled all of the strips, which have been adapted into this animated special.
On our website, you'll be able to go there and download a PDF, which Joshua has put together, and you'll be able to see what the strips are, and you'll be able to read along with us.

(04:36):
It's a little trickier than going with gocomics.com and just going through because they're done in a variety of different orders.
They're told out of sequence because they were just collaged to make this special.
So before you listen to this, if you really want to get hardcore, go download that, then come back and we'll go through the strips.
But before we do that, I bet if there's one person in the world who would have a few things to say about the history and the making of A Charlie Brown Christmas!

(05:05):
It's my pal, Harold Buchholz.
Harold, do you got any info for us?

Harold (05:10):
Yes, actually I do.
So I was thinking about this special and that it's been running now for what, 57?
This would be the 58th year.
And it's still part of the cultural...
It's available if anybody is wanting to see it.

(05:32):
It's not on the networks as it normally is.
Apple bought the rights to all of the Peanuts stuff for their streaming service.
But because they know it is such a part of the cultural landscape, what they've done is they've allowed people who do not pay for the Apple, what's it called, Apple Plus?
What's the name of the service that they do?

(05:53):
They will allow you to actually see it for free.
I think you may have to sign up to get in there, but they will let you specifically see the peanuts specials, like the Thanksgiving special and the Christmas special for free because they don't want to be the Grinch and have a wall between people and this beloved show.
So thank you to Apple for doing that.

(06:15):
And if you do want to see it this year, that is a way to do it.
Yeah, so the background on this Christmas special, Lee Mendelson was a producer, kind of a very entrepreneurial guy.
He was in the San Francisco area and he met Schulz in 1963.
He had just done a documentary on Willie Mays called The Man Named Mays, which had aired and Schulz had seen it and it just hit Mendelson at one point.

(06:45):
I've just done a documentary on the greatest baseball player of the time, why don't I do a documentary on the worst baseball player of all time?
And so that's why he got in touch with Schulz because that idea just tickled his fancy.
So Schulz, like I said, had seen the Willie Mays documentary and really liked it, so he agreed to meet about it.

(07:07):
And at this point, the Ford Falcon commercials, which were on the Tennessee Ernie Ford show, as well as I guess regular broadcast ads, had already run in 1962.
And you can see them on YouTube if you want.
And they're very interesting because it's the very first attempt at animation.
And Bill Melendez, who had been a former Disney animator and did a lot of Warner Brothers animation, he was a top animator at Warner Brothers on the Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck cartoons.

(07:40):
He was the guy who was brought in by this ad agency.
He had essentially auditioned for this kind of flat peanuts animation style.
And he said, animators don't audition.
But when he found out it was for peanuts, he was like, okay, I get it.
This had never been translated and Schulz's style was so two dimensional, they needed to get somebody who could actually make it work.

(08:03):
And so Melendez had done these Ford commercials and Schulz liked him.
And Schulz was a very loyal guy.
So, Melendez had worked with him before.
So he recommended Melendez to be the guy to animate maybe two minutes of stuff for this boy named Charlie Brown documentary in 1963.

(08:25):
And they actually made it and without a sponsor and without a network.
And to the surprise of Lee Mendelsohn, nobody wanted to buy it.
So it sat on a shelf for seven years before the fame of Schulz was so overwhelming that finally someone says, okay, yeah, let's air this special seven years later.
But that was kind of the beginning of this little team that was floating there in the animation world for Charles Schulz.

(08:52):
And apparently what happened was that there was an opportunity when the Time Magazine gave a front cover Peanuts coverage, which was Time Magazine.
If you got on the cover of Time Magazine, that seemed to be like that meant you have made it in American culture.

(09:12):
And that happened in April of 1965.

Jimmy (09:15):
It's like getting a whole bunch of likes on Instagram all at once.

Harold (09:20):
Now I understand, yeah, yeah.
And so this guy from McCann Erickson, an ad agency, had just seen the documentary on Schulz that they had turned down to find a sponsor.
But the guy kind of liked what he had seen and he saw the animation that had been done.
And he just called up Lee Mendelson and said, how would you like to do a Christmas special?

(09:44):
Because Coca-Cola was looking for a Christmas special.
And that's not a lot of lead time for a half hour animated special.
But he said, hey, what do you think about that?
And Lee's like, sure, absolutely.
And then he calls up Charles Schulz and says, I think I just sold a Charlie Brown Christmas show.

(10:04):
And he said, Schulz said, and what show might that be?
And Mendelson, the one you need to make an outline for tomorrow.
So that was the beginning of it.
And he said, Schulz said, OK, come on up.
Because they were so close to each other.
Schulz is in the Santa Rosa, Sebastopol area, just south of San Francisco.

(10:26):
And this is where Lee Mendelson is based out of.
It's near San Francisco.
So next day, he visits Schulz, and they just kind of sit down.
And according to Mendelson, it was like, Schulz said, OK, if it's going to be a Christmas special, I want to certainly deal with the true meaning of Christmas.
And I'd like to do a lot of scenes with snow and with skating.
So obviously his memories of Hennepin County was on his mind.

(10:50):
And basically Mendelson said, it all tumbled out.
And I'm pulling a lot of this from an amazing book.
If anybody's a Charlie Brown Christmas fan or is just interested in the history of this, check out A Charlie Brown Christmas, The Making of a Tradition by Lee Mendelson with reminiscences by Bill Melendez.
It came out in 2000, right after Schulz had passed away.

(11:13):
And you can kind of feel that freshness of loss of Schulz and celebration of Schulz.

Jimmy (11:20):
Is that the square book with the silver cover?

Harold (11:22):
Yes, it's a beautiful-
That's a great book, yeah.
And done by people that were in the middle of it.
And there are things in there that you normally would not see in a book like this unless, I mean, Melendez was still around, obviously Mendelson was.
So they have the entire, I forget the term, but basically every single assignment for every single scene for every single anime.

(11:44):
You can see who was assigned what in this two-page spread.
There's lots of cool stuff like that in there.
And the reminiscences are very fresh from a lot of people in 2000.
And he dedicated the book for Sparky Will Never Forget You.
So it's a great book.
So anyway, what happens is in this conversation where he's just hanging out with Schulz and trying to figure what it's all about.

(12:09):
He says it all tumbled out and they wound up pretty much having the idea for what this was going to be instantly.
And of course, Schulz says, well, get in touch with Bill Melendez again.
He's our guy.
And so he calls up Bill Melendez and says, can you do a Christmas special in eight months?
Which really wound up being six months.
And just like Mendelsohn, Melendez was like, sure.

(12:33):
But of course it could be done.
But it is really, really tight to do something like this.
It helps, I think that, you know, he had the background animating Schulz before.
He'd already worked with them.
So they didn't have to figure out certain things that they would have had to figure out otherwise.
So that helped.
And then they brought in all of the children because they were gonna do children's voices, which was pretty unheard of to have children doing children.

Jimmy (12:58):
It has one of the big keys to, I think, what makes it peanuts-y, which is a brilliant maneuver by Schulz because one of the big hooks, I think especially at the time, was it's little kids talking like adults.
And even though we've established that's not exactly what it is, I think to the general populace, it probably was.

(13:19):
So can you talk a little bit about that?
I'm sure that was Schulz's decision, but was there ever thought of going with professional adult actors?

Harold (13:28):
I think Schulz specifically said he did not like that.
He did not like the sound of adults pretending to be children.
And so that was something he did insist on because that was kind of his own pet peeve that he didn't want that in there.
And I think Melendez was game to do it.
He'd already done it.
I think he'd done it with the child's voice, back with the Ford Falcon thing.

(13:51):
So again, it was something they were kind of familiar with.
And Peter Robbins was the first Charlie Brown.
And he said he was mystified by a lot of the dialogue.
And it seemed edgy to him as a kid, because they're talking about, it's all run by a great Eastern syndicate, and stuff like that.

(14:12):
They didn't understand what they were saying.
And the girl that played little Sally was six years old.
She couldn't read yet.
And so they would feed her a line or half of the line at a time.
And you hear that in the special where she's saying things like, all I want is what's coming to me.
All I want is my fair share.

(14:33):
And it's just so endearing.
This little kid just trying to spit these words out that do sound like a couple of layers too complex for her.
It's really special and unique.
And the idea that they struggle a little bit with their own lines, that's pretty amazing.

(14:55):
I mean, even the kid who played Linus, I think he was, he maybe just turned seven.
And he had done some voice work before and they said, you know, he's kind of a perfect voice for Linus because, you know, how do you embody these characters that people have gotten to know so well and everyone's got their own voice in their own head as they're reading them.

(15:17):
And that's a really interesting question.
Do you really have a voice in your head so that when Linus speaks, it's like, that's not Linus?
I think that's probably true.
It's like when Garfield first came out, I think people were a little shocked at his voice because they thought they knew what it was, but they knew what it wasn't, you know, and somehow they seem to nail it with the Peanuts characters in a way that is pretty remarkable.

Jimmy (15:45):
Well, I mean, but is that, do you hear a voice of the character in your head or do you hear like your own internal reading voice, like whatever that voice is?

Harold (15:54):
Yeah, I don't think I'm in an audio or oral for myself.
I mean, listening to something, I don't think I'm as specific as some people are.
I think some people might be more specific in their own minds than say I am, but you know, Christopher Shea was Linus and you know, when they were looking, there was the casting person said, well, I had this kid who has a slight lisp and he can read with great emotion.

(16:19):
And they were like, oh, we found our Linus.
This is a great kid.
But even then, you know, he's barely old enough to read some of this.
So they're having to feed him a bunch of this, a bunch of these lines.
So anyway, it's just a really interesting thing.
And then for the Hark the Herald Angels Sing, they go and find, I think at the St.

(16:41):
Paul's Episcopal Church in San Rafael, they basically just had a bunch of kids who were in the choir who volunteered, didn't even know what they were signing up for.
It's just, well, you want to support the church.
Show up at 7 p.m.
and they bust them over.
For a few nights, they sing Christmas carols.
And that's, you know, and they had no idea really what this was all about until the special came out and they were like, oh, which version did they use of the songs that we sang?

(17:11):
So Mendelssohn, this was just a grueling session.
According to the Charlie Brown voice actor, he said that it was, I think, three hours, was all the kids were together, it was chaos.
But they recorded pretty much the whole thing in three hours with all the, everybody all together, including Melendez, who would do the voice of Snoopy sped up.

(17:36):
Or not voice, but you know, the sounds of Snoopy.
Which must have been also a tough choice, right?
Because Snoopy is, I think, you know, he thinks, we see him think all the time.
And then what do you do in animation?
Do you let him have the echoey voice of the, you know, John didn't ask for a second cup of coffee?

Jimmy (17:54):
I mean, to me, that is such the obvious choice to go.
Have Snoopy, he could even be an adult voice, right?
Have it all be in his head, and you'll be able to get that Snoopy voice that you have in a strip.
But boy, thank God they didn't do that.

Harold (18:11):
It would totally change the animated specials and change the balance of the specials.
Yeah.
You know, but you're right.
I mean, I'm guessing that must have been Schulz insisting, and Melendez apparently was quite happy with the idea of, hey, let's just let him be like a Harpo Marx kind of character.

Jimmy (18:28):
Yeah.

Harold (18:29):
But it does change probably more than anything.
I think that changes the nature of the strip versus the animated specials and the fact that we do not know Snoopy's thoughts verbally.

Jimmy (18:40):
Yeah, very, very much.
It's, and I never even thought about it, but if you were a person who just read the, or just watch the specials, you do have a very different conception of Snoopy.

Harold (18:52):
Yeah, and I was just thinking, and I'm trying to do a little bit of math, and I would estimate that the number of viewings of this specific special is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of one billion.

Jimmy (19:07):
Amazing.

Harold (19:08):
And I was, I'm trying to think what other film or television things have been seen one billion times, particularly something that has like a storyline in it.
Now maybe music videos, collectively, people see it over and over.

Jimmy (19:22):
Well, music videos are different, yeah.

Harold (19:23):
Gangnam Style has been seen well over a billion times, right?

Jimmy (19:27):
And that's three minutes.
That's a different commitment.

Harold (19:30):
Right, it's not narrative.
And I think, okay, Rudolph is probably up there.
The Grinch is probably up there.
But like, you know, the biggest soup.
It's a wonderful life, maybe getting close to that.
But you try to think of what's lasted long enough to cumulatively around the world have that level of viewership and common experience.

(19:52):
I would guess it's up there in the top 10 of anything that's ever been made.
I mean, you got Wizard of Oz, you know, you are Gone With the Wind.
I mean, even those, I think it beats out.
And it's, you know, like when a movie's in a movie theaters, you know, the biggest movie is going to be seen by maybe, I mean, Gone With the Wind probably had 25 million, 30 million people see it at first, just like a TV show.

Jimmy (20:20):
Right.

Harold (20:20):
It's crazy.

Jimmy (20:22):
Well, you know, the other thing about it is Charlie Brown Christmas only airs at Christmas.
I mean, you can sort of like lots of like Gone With the Wind, you know, it airs once a year, but you can watch it anytime.

Harold (20:33):
Yeah, I think like reruns of, yeah, and reruns of Andy Griffith's show are probably in the hundreds of millions because that show just never died and ran on all these different countries.
The Flintstones has been all over the world.

Jimmy (20:51):
So, you know, this is our new podcaster.
We just named TV shows, the Jeffersons.

Harold (21:04):
In the Carlton, Your Doorman animated special, I'm sure is up there too.

Jimmy (21:08):
A classic.
By the way, that's our second Carlton, Your Doorman reference on this podcast.
That's how hip we are.

Harold (21:15):
We are with it.
Anything newer than 50 years is a shock to our listeners.
Basically, these guys are going flat out trying to make this thing.
They don't have a whole lot of time to second guess, shoot something over again, redo a scene.
They just have to stick with Schulz's storyboard ideas and they just have to go for it.

(21:39):
I think you see that in the special.
I think that's why in some ways it's so raw and so true to Schulz is because in some ways, they didn't have any time to try to take it beyond the strip and then that set the mold going forward of how this was going to be.
Mendelsohn was saying the show was finished a week before the broadcast date, I bet.

(22:01):
They said they were all exhausted and for the first time, the staff watched the entire show.
It said, we all felt our uneasiness after the screening.
We thought that perhaps we had somehow missed the boat.
However, one of the animators, Ed Levitt, stood up in the back row and declared, A Charlie Brown Christmas!

(22:21):
will run for a hundred years.
And he said most of us would have been happy for two.
So then Mendelsohn flies this print with this print to New York City and he presents it to these two CBS executives.
Nervous as can be.
And he quotes them saying, well, you gave it a good shot.

(22:43):
It seems a little flat, a little slow.
We will of course air it next week, but I'm afraid we won't be ordering anymore.
We're sorry.
And believe me, we're big Peanuts fans.

Jimmy (22:54):
Yes, believe me, believe me, there's no one who loves you more than us.

Harold (23:00):
Isn't that turning the knife even more?
We were rooting for this more than anything.
And even with that extra push, you failed.

Jimmy (23:08):
And with their unerring sense of incorrectness, they confidently predict they will not be making anymore.
I love it.

Harold (23:19):
We're saying maybe it's just better suited to the comics page.
No, I get that because they're seeing something for the first time and it is unlike other animation.
It's not as slick.

Jimmy (23:29):
And they lack any slow and or creative bone in their body.
And therefore, are afraid to say they like it because it's different, right?
It's an artistic statement.
That will make any guy in a suit mad, upset, nervous, holding on to their wallet.

Harold (23:48):
Yeah, well, what are they going to peg it against?
And this thing was standing alone and it wasn't what they expected.
Anyway, so the story goes Mendelssohn heard them talk to each other and they said, what should we do with Bergheim?
And Mendelssohn's like, and then the other guy says, we shouldn't show it to him.
It's like, who's Bergheim?

(24:09):
And it turned out he was the TV reviewer for Time magazine.
He was waiting outside to review it to hit his deadline.
And Mendelssohn was like, well, wouldn't it be worse if you don't show it to him?
So they said, all right, yeah, you can see it.
And so he had to sit through a second screening with Bergheim silently watching this thing.

(24:30):
The guy gets up, thanks him, and leaves.
And Mendelssohn's like, oh.
He's just devastated because nobody is responding to this thing except Ed Levitt in that room.
And so he said he flew home to San Francisco.
And the airport was like the first place to get the early copy of Time magazine.

(24:54):
And so when he got there, it was just being loaded on there.
And he said, I was shaking when I opened it up.
He got a lovely review from Time magazine.
And so I was like, well, maybe we've got a shot.
So it airs on December 9th, 1965.
It gets a 45% share, which basically means 45% of all television sets that were tuned in watched this show.

(25:17):
It was the number two show only to Bonanza, which was a blockbuster at the time, Western.
And as one ad exec was quoted as saying, I think in David Michaelis' book, all heaven broke loose.
People just like, oh, this is amazing.
The warmth and everyone all of a sudden just instantly embraced this special.

(25:41):
And it goes on to win the Peabody Award for Outstanding Children's Program.
It wins the Emmy Award for Outstanding Animated Special.
Yeah, so probably over 40 million people saw it the very first time it airs.
And then it goes on to, I think the peak was 1969, which kind of gives you some peanuts barometer of where peanuts was in the culture.

(26:05):
The 1969 is the peak year of the Christmas special where it had a 53 share.
And I'm guessing in that case, probably 50 million people watched it.
And that's in the top 10 Christmas specials of all time.
So it was 1967.
And usually those like the Bob Ho Christmas specials were the ones that everybody was watching.

(26:27):
But for animated specials, it's the highest rated animated Christmas special ever for the top two slots.
So it may be more.
Yeah.

Jimmy (26:38):
Well deserved.
It is an absolute masterpiece.
And you know what else was a masterpiece?
That bit of research from you, Mr.
Harold Buchholz.
Thank you so much.
I feel like I just got a Christmas present from you hearing all that.
That was wonderful.

Harold (26:53):
Thank you.

Jimmy (26:54):
So listen, how about this?
We're going to take a quick break now.
And when we come back, we're going to talk about why Michael's never seen it.
And late breaking news, Liz saw the premiere.
So we're going to discuss that.
So meet us on the other side of this.

Liz (27:08):
Hi, everyone.
It's the holiday season.
And Unpacking Peanuts has gift ideas for everyone on your list.
Jimmy, Michael and Harold all have books for sale.
You can find links to buy them on our website.
You can also purchase exclusive Unpacking Peanuts t-shirts.
If you're feeling especially generous and love the podcast, we invite you to support us on Patreon or buy us a mud pie.

(27:34):
Warm greetings of the season from all of us at Unpacking Peanuts.
And now back to the show.

Jimmy (27:41):
And we're back.
Michael, you have never seen a Charlie Brown Christmas.
Is that correct?

Michael (27:47):
It is true.
And also I have never seen any of the Peanuts specials.

Jimmy (27:52):
Explain yourself.

Michael (27:53):
Well, it's a complicated story.
You're talking 1965.
So I would have been 15.
Right.
And at 15, I would have had no say in what we were watching on TV.
It would have been a family decision.

(28:15):
Right.
And since my family did not celebrate Christmas, and since Bonanza was on, I can pretty much guarantee we're watching Bonanza.
Anyway, the fact that I haven't seen any of the animated specials kind of nullifies that excuse.

(28:37):
The fact is that I am very much a purist on reading the comic strips.
That's the form I grew up with.
That's the form I loved.
A big influence on my life.
But I remember when I saw the first commercials, it bothered me and started seeing ads.

(28:58):
And it was sort of a feeling like, okay, selling out, not a good thing.
But also, it was a little jarring to see them animated, and I didn't like it.
And I'm sure I knew the specials were on, but I had no interest in watching the specials.

Harold (29:18):
Well, you have a unique perspective that almost nobody has, which you bring to this podcast, that you are all about the strips.
And that is what informs you about peanuts.
You don't have all this extra stuff in the back of your head that other people do when it comes to the strip.

Michael (29:35):
Right?
Well, I had never had any interest in the toys or even the books.
It was just pure strips and collections of the strips.
And I know a lot of our listeners are probably fans of collecting the toys.
And I think that's great, but I didn't want anything that was not pure Schulz peanuts.

(29:58):
No, so certainly over the years, I've caught little bits and pieces of the specials and I really don't like the voices.
Oh, wow.
I hear you when you're saying, it was charming that it was little kids, but they were also not actors.
And it's a very subtle strip with very, very careful dialogue.

(30:21):
And something was missing.
Even though I didn't, I don't think I actually heard what their voices were in my head, but it was not kids.
And it was, you know, well-delivered lines.

Harold (30:41):
Right.

Michael (30:41):
You know, these strips are just carefully paced.
And so you can hear what the characters, or the words they're saying, but you can also hear their tone.
And when that's not there, it's very flat.
And like you're describing, the kids were being prompted, or they didn't know what the words meant.

(31:04):
So you're not gonna get the best reading, or even a good reading.
So anyway, I'm perfectly happy not to have seen them.
And I don't think I will ever see them, which is fine.
I don't want anything corrupting.

Jimmy (31:19):
Yeah, and I just want to say, I'm sorry, what was that?

Michael (31:22):
No, I just don't want, I have this very pure, pure experience with peanuts, and not modulated in any way by any outside influences.

Jimmy (31:38):
And not only would I consider it a failure for this podcast, if Michael had to watch the animated specials, I would consider it a failure of my friendship with Michael, if he had to watch the specials.
Because it is a totally different perspective.
It is one I totally respect.
And it's one that I might have shared if I was Michael's age, right?

(32:01):
Because when I watched, Peanuts just appeared, and the shows were already years old by the time I was watching them.
There was no thought of what would peanuts be like animated.
There's a very good chance I saw animated versions of Peanuts from the time I was an infant, just in my line of sight or whatever.
So, yeah, so I am very happy that we have three such different and Venn diagram like takes on Peanuts.

(32:30):
And I can't wait.
And like I said, at the top of the show, whether you're a Christmas fan or not, stick with us.
We are going to go through these strips now and we'll just enjoy them like we always do because this is Schulz and Peanuts at the absolute top of his game.
Want to go through the strips?
Sure.
All right, so we are going to just jump here to the strips.

(32:51):
And remember, these are all the strips that Schulz chose and Mendelssohn chose to adapt into this classic special, a Charlie Brown Christmas.
And they're not all Christmas strips.

Michael (33:02):
They're all over the place.

Jimmy (33:03):
So here we go.
This is July 1st, 1959.
Charlie Brown is standing outside, looking very contemplative, blindness with thumb and blanket in classic position, looks on.
Charlie Brown says, I thought having a baby sister would change my whole life, but it hasn't.
Charlie Brown leans up on, it's like an old rustic fence, replacing the thinking wall.

(33:27):
And he says, people still hate me.
Nobody really likes me.
I get just as depressed as I always did.
Then he walks away from Linus, looking completely forlorn.
Linus, worried, looks after him and says, poor Charlie Brown.
Then Linus, in classic thumb and blanket pose, says, of all the Charlie Browns in the world, he's the Charlie Brownest.

Michael (33:49):
Now, I wonder if Schulz had that punchline and was just waiting for the right strip, because it's such a classic punchline.

Harold (33:57):
Yeah, yeah, which came first.
That's really interesting.
I wouldn't know which way that happened.
It would be tough to guess.
If he set himself up and came up with an amazing end line or if he had that end line like Michael said.
And he found a great set up for it.

Jimmy (34:13):
But I do think it's improved in the animated special where it's Charlie Browniest, of all the Charlie Browns in the world.
You're the Charlie Browniest.

Michael (34:22):
That's how I read it.
I read it that way.
I remember it as Browniest.

Harold (34:27):
That's interesting.

Michael (34:28):
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.

Jimmy (34:29):
That is interesting.
One of the wild things is just that so much of this is a collage, the whole special is a collage.
He's taking all of these strips, moving them around, switching characters.
And if you download Joshua Stauffer's PDF on our website, unpackingpeanuts.com, he does his own little take on the differences and stuff between the strips and the adaptation.

(34:53):
But boy, the whole thing is a collage.
It's these old strips.
It's a Bible verse.
It's Vince Garaldi's music, which we haven't mentioned, but which is iconic and everyone in the world knows.
I wonder how he must have known that's such a great punchline and thought, great, and I can fix it.
I can add that I that Michael's been hearing all these years anyway.

Harold (35:14):
Yeah, what a way to open the thing.
That shows you how strongly he felt about that strip and that statement.

Jimmy (35:21):
Absolutely.
February 14th, 1963.
It's Valentine's Day.
In the foreground, Shermie and Violet are exchanging Valentine's.
Charlie Brown looks on from the background.
He says, Rats, nobody ever gives me any Valentines.
Then he walks off looking upset saying, I wish there wasn't such a thing as Valentine's Day.

(35:43):
I know nobody likes me.
Then in the last panel, he shouts to the heavens, why do we have to have a Valentine's Day to emphasize it?
Now, this is changed in the animated special to be, why do we have to have a holiday season?

Michael (36:00):
This brought something to mind.
I guess it was probably some play in the early 70s.
I thought, I wonder if I could do a daily strip.
I will try to write one with cartoon me as the main character.
He stole the punch line.
I didn't consciously do it.
Now I realize this was my strip.

Harold (36:25):
Welcome to the club.
How many times have I done that?
And then I see that I read peanuts for this podcast.
Like, oh, that wasn't mine.

Jimmy (36:33):
I'm fairly certain I stole one for I think I mentioned in one of the early episodes for a commercial gig I do on a monthly basis.
And we haven't come up to it in the strips yet.
But I know it's coming and I'll be like, oh, they're just baked in.
When you've read thousands of times, what do you think?
I think it's better having this on Valentine's Day than Christmas.

Harold (36:53):
What I like about the Christmas special version of it is it's so low-key in the Christmas special.
And you'd think in an animated thing, it would be the over the top yelling like we have in the comic strip, but it's the reverse.
He's saying it in this very low-key way, which really kind of knifes you in the heart the way he says it.

(37:14):
And I think it was the right choice because the animation, I think, can exaggerate things so much that you can almost lose what you're trying to say that it's done in this.
It's not a whisper, but it's very quiet.

Michael (37:26):
It's a scream in my head voice.
He's yelling on that last panel.

Harold (37:31):
Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
But not in the special, it's very much him saying it almost in a resigned way, which really gets you.

Jimmy (37:45):
January 6, 1955.
Patty and Charlie Brown are standing outside in the snow.
Charlie Brown says, come on and see the snowman pick pen made.
Patty says to Charlie Brown, say, I'll bet playing around in the snow kept him clean, didn't it?
They both walk off towards Pig Pen with Charlie Brown saying, on the contrary.
And then Charlie Brown presents Pig Pen Snowman and says, the world's dirtiest snowman.

Harold (38:09):
With a big smile on Pig Pen's face of pride.

Jimmy (38:12):
Yes, and the snowman's face and Charlie Brown's.

Harold (38:16):
They're all happy about it, except for Patty.
She's a little uncertain, it looks like.

Jimmy (38:23):
Uh, Michael just found a really interesting article about Pig Pen.
And what was it?
Astra magazine?

Michael (38:28):
Yeah, it's a web magazine.
I've never heard of it.
I've saw a link to it.
And I don't want to comment on it too much.
It's definitely worth reading.
But I would have considered Pig Pen like a one joke character.
And a very perceptive writer goes on for pages on the depths of Pig Pen.

(38:52):
And how complex a character he is.
So read that because I've never seen that.
And now I can appreciate Pig Pen some more.

Jimmy (39:03):
I mean, that is a sign of a great work of art.
That the more you look at it and the more you go into it with an open mind and open eyes, you do see stuff.
You see stuff that you never thought about before.
And, you know, apparently, and even according to that article, Schulz himself thought Pig Pen was a one-joke idea and actually wrote him out of the strip for nine years, which I've read this thing all the way through twice and never noticed that Pig Pen was gone for like nine years.

(39:34):
I've even thought about it.
And it's not that I don't like it.

Harold (39:36):
Which decade was he not around?

Jimmy (39:37):
Oh, I think what I don't, you know, it's like the late 60s to the end of the 70s or something like that, I'm pretty sure, or it might be 70s into the 80s.
Read the article.
They have the right dates, but it's really interesting.

Harold (39:51):
And it's interesting for those who have seen the Christmas special, I think there's something about the special that really cements him in the Peanuts pantheon because he comes across as a, as very self-confident and proud, but in a, he has this kind of high self-esteem that somehow comes across as pretty endearing.

(40:15):
And that, I think that, at least in my mind, that is Pigpen probably because of having seen the Christmas special so many times that I look at him through the lens of the special, I will admit, because of how he comes across as just, if anybody gives him any trouble, he's got the comeback for their insults or their criticisms.

Jimmy (40:40):
We're not going to read this one, but May 31st, 1957, is another strip that was adapted where Charlie Brown says, Pigpen, you're the only person I know who can raise a cloud of dust in a snowstorm.
So that also, Pigpen gets another gag there in the special.
December 3rd, 1955.

(41:00):
Linus and Lucy are standing out in the snow and it's flurrying.
Lucy says, try to catch the snowflakes on your tongue, Linus.
The second panel has them both standing there trying to do just that.
Then in panel 3, Linus seems to be chowing down on some snowflakes.
Hmm, smack, smack.
Then he looks to Lucy and says, need sugar.

(41:24):
So were you guys ever, well, Michael, you weren't the snowflake catcher.

Michael (41:28):
I did not know what snow was.

Jimmy (41:30):
You didn't have snow?

Harold (41:32):
When was the first time you saw snow, Michael?

Michael (41:34):
Well, I grew up in New York till I was four and a half, so I just didn't remember it.

Harold (41:39):
Till four and a half, okay.
Yeah, I love the thin little tongue on Lucy on the second panel.
It makes me think of a dog's tongue rather than a child's tongue.

Jimmy (41:51):
I'm never 100% when he sticks the tongues out.
They always look a little creepy to me.
Like lizard-like or something.

Harold (41:59):
How about when they're writing and they've got the tongue up in the corner?

Jimmy (42:04):
That's okay, I can tolerate that.
It's the profile tongue.

Michael (42:07):
How about when they're aware of their tongue?

Harold (42:12):
Don't say it.

Jimmy (42:13):
Now we're doomed.

Michael (42:15):
I can't even talk now.

Jimmy (42:23):
January 5th, 1960.
Lucy and Linus are out doing the snow catching on your tongue bit again, five years later.
Linus says, catch the snowflakes on your tongue, Lucy.
Then Lucy, very professorily, says, it's too early.
I never eat January snowflakes.
I always wait until February.

(42:43):
And in panel three she walks away, leaving Linus alone to comment in panel four, they sure look ripe to me.
That's a wild thing to think he had a 1955 strip and a 1960 strip.
You know what, there's like 1500 comic strips between them or whatever, more.
But he puts them together in this show as if they're like seconds apart.

(43:07):
I wonder how this, like, do you think he just like sat down with a bunch of books and like went through just circling gags or tearing pages?

Harold (43:16):
I'm wondering what kind of access he had to his former strips, you know, because obviously not all of them had been reprinted and then they got mixed up.
So for a Christmas special, you know, you would think, let's go back and look around November through February and see what we got.

Michael (43:31):
But I bet he had a clip.
I bet he clipped them out and put them in a notebook.
He'd have to do that.

Harold (43:36):
Yes, to somebody.
Yeah, right.
Like his secretary, yeah, would have like, have these, yeah, these tear sheets or something from the syndicate that they could just flip through.
Yeah, he must have, right?

Michael (43:48):
Yeah, because he has to get to all the backgrounds.
That tree has to look exactly the same every time.

Jimmy (43:53):
You know, I was just going to say this.
And if this came to me and they said, hey, Jimmy, you're going to do a Christmas special and you're going to have to just pick the best stuff from Amelia from like 1,300 pages of it, I would feel in a weird way almost constricted by it.

Harold (44:12):
Really?

Jimmy (44:12):
Did it?

Michael (44:14):
You did it for a Christmas musical.

Jimmy (44:16):
No, but that was adapted.
Well, we did do a Christmas musical, which Michael wrote, but that's different because that's one of the stories.

Michael (44:22):
You picked the bit you wanted in there from Amelia.

Jimmy (44:25):
But it was all from one issue, is my point.
My point is I didn't really take stuff from all over it.
And I didn't take stuff, like I didn't take a Rondeline and give it to Tanner.
Or I didn't, you know.
That I would feel weird about doing, I think, which is the wrong move.
I mean, he was so smart to go, I have a gold mine of the greatest comic material ever.

(44:46):
And I'm going to use it as a raw material to make this other art.
Again, like a collage.

Harold (44:51):
Well, it's so episodic, you have to, right?
I mean, at this point, he doesn't have a ton of arcs.
He has a few for Christmas.
So he's got to pull something kind of out of the hat here.
And this is the thing about these animated specials is they are extremely episodic, like the strip.

(45:11):
And I think to some people that's maybe jarring because, you know, that no other animation is done this way, where you have the set up for a joke and the characters are in a certain location.
And sometimes it's almost like they'll just like fade out, fade back into the same setting where people are now in a slightly different position and then you do the next gag.

(45:32):
You know, that was always kind of a piece of what these shows were about is like Bill Melendez wanted to mess with Schulz's original vision so little that you would get these little smatterings of basically a four panel joke that's going to run maybe 15 seconds.
And then there's going to be another one with, you know, with Peppermint, Patty and Marcy that's in the same room.

(45:56):
But the setting has changed just like the strips change.
And it's a really interesting choice.
And it makes these specials different than I think any other any other animation I've ever seen.

Jimmy (46:06):
One of the things, though, I think that makes particularly this one and to a lesser extent, some of the early ones shine a little bit more maybe is that Schulz isn't super precious about it, right?
Like I said, you know, he will take a character, you know, and switch the lines of dialogue, whatever he needs to do to make it work.
A whole setting we'll see later is a play rehearsal in the show, but it's a baseball meeting in the strip.

Harold (46:32):
Yeah.

Jimmy (46:33):
And later when I think when Schulz gets less involved and then sadly, you know, after he passes away, it becomes where they are just adapting strips almost directly up until the movie where, you know, it's his son and someone else who writes the script.
And suddenly then there, it feels like they have that freedom again to mix and match and do some interesting stuff.

Harold (46:58):
I can say that I think probably why this one is that way.
And it's so collaged.
It probably was the most, you know, them all sitting in a room probably looking through things and collecting information as they go.
I think that's how it was done this first time around because they were all trying to figure it out together and they needed each other for support and insight.

(47:22):
But later, the way Bill Melendez described how these things were done, Schulz would create an outline independently of Melendez or Mendelssohn for the most part.
He would send that to Melendez.
Melendez would then take it and storyboard it out.
Obviously, Schulz, probably his secretary, had collected the strips.
Basically, he's getting, not Schulz thinking this through bit by bit and how it all put pieces together, but he's just getting this outline.

(47:50):
They make a storyboard for it.
They send it back to Schulz.
Schulz basically changes it and rewrites it off of the storyboard they create.
Then he sees Schulz two times after the outline in person.
Then it's like two two-hour meetings, and then that's it.
Then Schulz is like, okay, you're the animator.

(48:10):
You make it happen.
It is a very formalized process.
So much limited animation was done in the Saturday morning.
It was like you'd have somebody who was not an artist write a Scooby-Doo script or whatever.
Then they would send that to Hanna Barbera.
Then somebody who never met the writer would storyboard this out and lay it out as best they could.

(48:34):
So you wouldn't get visual gags or whatever because the writers, it's all words.
There's no visuals to help write the story.
So it's kind of this weird hybrid with what Schulz is doing.
He's actually sending them finished things in comic strip form that they have to translate.
And because it's done, I think in that kind of, it's not assembly line process, but it's a back and forth that the strips.

(48:58):
Yeah, I think after you do the special a couple of times when they're working together, then it's just, I'm off in my corner doing this, hand it off to you.
You do it in your corner.
And there's not that collaboration.

Jimmy (49:11):
June 23rd, 1958.
Linus is annoyed but in classic thumb and blanket position.
Behind him, Lucy is hectoring him.
You in that dumb blanket, you'll be dragging that thing around for the rest of your life.
Linus yells after her.
Well, what's it to you?
Maybe I won't drag it around for the rest of my life.
Then he thinks about it for a little bit in panel three, then shouts out to his sister who has now left the room.

(49:37):
Maybe I'll have it made into a sport coat.
It's impossible to not do the read like this show.
Which I'm trying not to do, but it's almost impossible.

Michael (49:49):
People do tend to shout in the last panel, though.

Jimmy (49:53):
May 24, 1964.
In the first panel, we see the psychiatry stand.
Psychiatric help, five cents.
The doctor is way out.
Charlie Brown, looking very upset, walks towards the stand, saying, I hate feeling like this.
He sits down.
Lucy is there now.
And he says to Lucy, I've come to you because lately I've...

(50:14):
Lucy interrupts him.
Wait a minute.
Before you begin, I must ask that you pay in advance.
Five cents, please.
We see two panels of Charlie Brown fishing a nickel out of his pocket with his tongue out of his mouth, putting it in the can.
And then Lucy says, boy, what a sound.
How I love to hear that old money plink, that beautiful sound of cold hard cash, that beautiful, beautiful sound.

(50:37):
Plink, plink, plink, what a beautiful sound.
Plink, plink, plink, nickels, nickels, nickels, that beautiful sound of beautiful plinking nickels.
Then after this, Lucy puts her head on her hands and leans over the booth and says to Charlie Brown, All right, now what seems to be your trouble?
Charlie Brown can only sigh.

Michael (50:58):
Why does the sky keep changing colors?

Jimmy (51:02):
Well, I was looking at this.
I believe this is a recolor job because we're looking at classic peanuts.
And also you can tell by the gradation in the sky from the blue to the light blue.
He just did that.
He would just do that abstract color.
And we almost always are looking at black and white strips when we're discussing them on the podcast.

(51:23):
But because we pulled these from actually the Peanuts Wiki, because at the moment, Go Comics has been down for like four days.
So I'm very concerned about that.
So good luck, Go Comics, whatever's going on there.

Harold (51:35):
But this was something that Schulz did do a lot.
He'd use really bold and changing colors from a yellow to a blue to a red in his Sunday strips.
And having read a lot of these in black and white, it was the ones in real time, like in 1975 or whatever, that I was reading.
And I remember that that was very distinct part of Peanuts, was Sunday Schulz would not hold a background color.

(52:01):
He would mix it up a lot.

Jimmy (52:03):
All right, if you had to vote now, you could only see the Sunday strips one way for the rest of your life, color or black and white.
What are you voting, Michael?

Michael (52:11):
I gotta go for black and white, but they were in color.
They just, for some reason, they never reprinted them in color.

Jimmy (52:18):
Harold, how about you?

Harold (52:19):
Oh, that's tough.
If I could have one or the other, I guess I'd choose the black and white because when it comes to color, there was nothing about Schulz's color choices that made me feel better about the strip or like the strip more, I guess.
So black and white, you just get to focus on the line art more, which I think is gorgeous.

Jimmy (52:44):
Yep, I would go black and white as well.

Harold (52:46):
Now look at that panel where he's putting that nickel into the can.
Look at the perspective on the top of her sign.
It's like going way up there.

Jimmy (52:57):
It's completely off and it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't even necessarily notice in black and white.
Unless it was colored, yeah.
That is one of the downsides of working in color, is that you can't have those sort of soft, well you can, but you have to work a lot harder with the color.
Those soft edges where you're kind of not trying to have the eye go, which is definitely what's happening there.

(53:23):
But it's fine too.
I'm not crazy about the coloring job on this.
I'm curious as to how close it is to the original.
And no offense to whoever did it.

Harold (53:31):
Yeah, I'm guessing it's probably identical with the exception of the computer.
The green on the tree seems, they've tried to kind of sponge it a little bit so that it looks like a three-dimensional.
And then you've got the slight gradation on the blue sky, which for some reason just doesn't seem to work with the flatness of the characters.

(53:53):
You know, I deal with that with my own strip because I've got usually flat colors on my characters, but the backgrounds can have a little gradation.
And it's hard.
It's hard to know.
You don't want to do something that looks so artificial like a computer did it.
But you also want to give a little bit of a variation.
And so obviously somebody thought it was okay to take the flat colors that Schulz had and just tweak it enough.

(54:22):
But to the point that they tweak it so little, I don't know what the purpose is.

Jimmy (54:28):
It's neither here nor there, right?

Harold (54:30):
Yeah, well, I like coloring.

Jimmy (54:33):
I always think I'll give up the coloring as part of my work, but then I realize it's so integral to what I'm doing, I kind of can't.

Harold (54:39):
Yeah, in my sycophantic way, but I genuinely love the color that you do, especially when you have the outdoor scenes and you've got little sunsets and the bursts.
Your color is really, really lovely.
And you have the flatness of the characters, certainly to start Amelia rules, the same flatness as Peanuts, because Peanuts was obviously a model for you, Peanuts for the 21st century with Amelia rules.

(55:08):
You did find a way to take, and I'm not sure what you did on the shading with the characters or how you mixed it up.
I'm trying to just from memory, but I remember the backgrounds being so rich, like the outdoor backgrounds.
And it doesn't detract at all.
Are there any thoughts you have about how you approach that and why, like something as flat as Schulz that you can get away with something that is as rich in the background as it is?

Jimmy (55:35):
Well, yeah, you know, because I think what it actually is, is that Schulz didn't have Schulz and everything that came after Schulz as an influence.
One of the weird things, like I love Cerebus.
I mean, Cerebus was, and that's a tough thing to say these days because it's swamped in all kinds of political and, you know, nonsense and controversies.

(55:59):
But at the time, it was the funniest, the most creative, coolest book before all that stuff engulfed it.
And it had a really rich background world by this guy Gerhard who just did the backgrounds.
And he's an artist, a 3D pen and ink artist on like Robert Crum or possibly beyond.
Like he's as good as a human can do that.

(56:20):
And I couldn't do that.
But I figured, well, if I do have a digital tool, if I just drew Amelia's neighborhood as richly as possible in notebooks.
And at the time, I actually would have had like, it was virtual Gerhard was my folder on my Mac.
And I had something like 50 different houses that I had drawn and I could paste them together in different ways and then draw over them to change them.

(56:44):
And I could take the leaves off and do all this weird stuff.
So that when I'd have those really rich backgrounds, I didn't have to spend the time on the page.

Harold (56:50):
So you're really an animation artist in that regard, right?

Jimmy (56:54):
Well, not anymore, but yeah, that was, yeah.

Harold (56:58):
Because for those of you who aren't that into animation or how it's done, what you had to do early on with most cartoons, if you were doing a color cartoon, is you could paint a beautiful background in acrylic or watercolor, and it could have as much detail as you wanted.
But the characters were on these clear plastic sheets that you would trace the artwork from the pencil drawings of the actual animator, usually with a black ink pen by people who were experts in that.

(57:31):
And then they would wind up painting on the back of those cells.
And in most cases, it was just a flat color because you couldn't afford to shade that.
So the backgrounds, you're just doing one for a whole sequence, and you could really put a lot of lovely art into it.

(57:51):
And so, I mean, I, as a fan of animation, just got used to the idea that you have a flat character on a background that can be extremely rich, and that's just normal.
And I guess that's an aesthetic I inherited from watching all these old cartoons, like Bugs Bunny and Disney films.

Jimmy (58:09):
Yeah, and I loved all that too.
Harold, you mentioned the lighting, and like you said, the sun's in the sky.

Harold (58:14):
Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy (58:15):
Okay, I'll tell you this story.
This is a tip.
Because obviously all that stuff you could do with lens flares in Photoshop, right?
You pull out this lens flare, that lens flare.
I used to work in television, and I had to do graphics on a daily basis.
And I was always looking for new things that I could use, and we obviously were a TV station, so we had weather, so I was trying to figure out how I could do different weather graphics.

(58:40):
I was in the parking lot of the TV station, and the sun was being reflected on a blacked-out windshield from one of the TV vans, you know?
And it was just this unbelievable lens flare on black glass.
And so I just took a photo of it.
And suddenly, so I had, like, a beautiful lens flare that was not a digital one over black, and I couldn't move the black digitally.

(59:07):
And then I thought, wow, why can't I do that every time I see just position a piece of black glass, and it was almost always that card, different times of day, and click, there's a sunset, click, there's noon, click, there's partly cloudy.
And I used that stuff for years.
And then, you know, you manipulate digitally and put it in with the artwork, and it works.

Harold (59:27):
Or it doesn't work.

Jimmy (59:30):
That's basically what it is.

Harold (59:32):
I mean, that is pretty genius.
I don't know, I've never heard of another artist having that mindset to think to capture that.
That's pretty cool.

Jimmy (59:39):
Oh, well, thanks.
Oh, no.
I can't believe I have to read this strip twice.
All right.
This is June 4th, 1961.
Lucy, looking really annoyed, is sitting at her psychiatry booth.
Linus comes up and sits down.

(59:59):
She says to him, What in the world are you doing here?
Linus says, I'm in sad shape.
My life is full of fear and anxiety.
The only thing that keeps me going is this blanket.
I need help.
Lucy, suddenly invested, stands out from behind the booth and starts talking to Linus.
Well, as they say on TV, the mere fact that you realize you need help indicates that you are not too far gone.

(01:00:22):
I think we had better try to pinpoint your fears.
If we can find out what it is you're afraid of, we can label it.
Are you afraid of responsibility?
If you are, then you have hype and geophobia.
I don't think that's quite it.
How about cats?
If you're afraid of cats, you have ailerophobia.
Well, sort of, but I'm not sure.
Are you afraid of staircases?

(01:00:42):
If you are, then you have climacophobia.
Maybe you have thalassophobia.
This is a fear of the ocean.
Or, jeffrofobia, which is a fear of crossing bridges.
Or maybe, says Lucy, you have pantophobia.
Do you think you might have pantophobia?
Lyna says, what's pantophobia?
Lucy says, the fear of everything.

(01:01:04):
Lyna yells, that's it!

Michael (01:01:07):
Perfect.

Harold (01:01:08):
Sending Lucy flying.

Michael (01:01:11):
Does she fly in the cartoon?
Does she flip over?

Jimmy (01:01:15):
Yes, but it's Charlie Brown that is the patient, which I think is an improvement.

Harold (01:01:22):
And I think that's as interesting when we think about the specificity.
I think we talked about this when we read the strip earlier, but the specificity of these characters seems so real to us.
And yet, it's fascinating that Schulz does reassign a character a major piece like this, and it works again on its own terms.

(01:01:44):
And that I wouldn't expect.
I would have thought he would have stuck with his characters, but it does work, I think, better with Charlie Brown.
And why Linus, when Linus normally doesn't show up, why did he think that Linus needed to be the one to say these things to Lucy?

Michael (01:02:04):
Well, the fact is Linus doesn't show it, but with the blanket, he's...
it's a security blanket.
He's deeply neurotic.
I guess the blanket absorbs a lot of that.
He usually doesn't show it that much.

Harold (01:02:19):
Well, that's true because it's so effective, right?
But Charlie Brown...
I mean, Michael, you not having seen the special, to hear the idea that Charlie Brown says almost exactly these same lines, does that seem wrong to you, or can you kind of see how Charlie Brown himself also could say he has, you know, fear?

Michael (01:02:40):
Yeah, I think it sounds wrong to me because he's...
I don't think he's afraid of things.
He just doesn't understand why everything goes wrong for him.

Harold (01:02:52):
Right, because he's always going up to swing again at something, right?
He'll try a lot of things.
He's afraid to talk to the little redhead girl.
There's certain things that he...
You know, we even think of Charlie Brown as just too much for him, but he is a trier, right, in a lot of ways?

Jimmy (01:03:07):
That is true.

Michael (01:03:08):
Yeah, I would definitely not swap out those characters.

Jimmy (01:03:12):
September 18th, 1961.
Lucy looks forlorn and a little annoyed.
She has her elbows on the table, and the remains of what looks like a pretty nice birthday party is scattered about the table.
Linus looks on as Lucy says, Nobody gave me what I wanted for my birthday.
Nobody.
What sort of presents do you call these?

(01:03:32):
She says that she looks over a whole mound of presents on the floor.
New shoes, a green sweater and a bunch of stupid toys.
Linus says, What were you expecting?
Lucy says, Real estate.

Harold (01:03:45):
So here Lucy is yelling again.

Michael (01:03:47):
Yeah.
We said it again in the last panel.
I think you got to scream the punchline.
That's part of Peanuts.

Harold (01:03:56):
And yet again in the animated piece, it's much more matter of fact how Lucy is speaking.
I think that works really well.
But it's interesting that the choices that Schulz is making when he's going through these, it's almost like he thinks some of his best punchlines are the ones when his characters are speaking the most loudly.

(01:04:18):
I'm seeing a trend here.

Michael (01:04:22):
This one went over my head.
I seem to remember puzzling what real estate was.

Harold (01:04:29):
Right, right.

Jimmy (01:04:30):
As opposed to fake estate.

Harold (01:04:32):
Yeah, as a little kid, I've scratched my head.
You wouldn't want toys?
What?
So strange.
And again, you were talking, Michael, about how when you hear a little kid stumbling over these lines, and you see the sophistication of what Schulz is writing, it just feels alien and wrong.

(01:04:53):
Having been imprinted to it, I think what my mind has done when I hear a child reading the precision of Schulz's words is it stands in such contrast that you're made aware of the precision of Schulz's words, which I actually really enjoy.
It's a strange thing.

Jimmy (01:05:15):
November 18, 1961.
Linus is writing a letter to Santa Claus as Charlie Brown looks on.
Linus writes, Dear Santa Claus, Enclosed, please find list of things I want for Christmas.
Also, please note indication of size, color, and quantity for each item listed.

(01:05:36):
Then in panel three, Linus seals up the envelope, leaving Charlie Brown alone in panel four to say, How efficient can you get?

Michael (01:05:43):
I'm guessing that Linus actually spoke those words rather than us seeing him write them.

Jimmy (01:05:50):
Well, what it is, is it's given to Sally.
And Sally comes up to Charlie Brown and says, Will you write a letter to Santa for me?
And she dictates it to him and delivers those lines.
So yes, it is that way.

Harold (01:06:07):
And how efficient can you get gets dropped.

Jimmy (01:06:10):
Right.
Really?

Harold (01:06:11):
It's part of a longer sequence.

Jimmy (01:06:13):
Yes, of Charlie Brown becoming disillusioned by people and their greed at Christmas.

Harold (01:06:18):
Hmm.

Jimmy (01:06:20):
And Charlie Brown then later finds out that you don't need to spend a lot of money.
You can just go out and get a grubby little tree, and that's all you need for the spirit of Christmas.
You can now buy a plastic replica of that grubby little tree.

Michael (01:06:34):
And what a coincidence.
Huge coincidence that he found a Charlie Brown tree.

Harold (01:06:39):
I know.
What were the odds?

Jimmy (01:06:41):
Well, now, do you guys know?
I'm sure we talked about this before, but that's what I used to do when I was a kid.
Me and my dad would go out into the woods and find the grubbiest little pine that would be growing out of the cold dirt, basically, and take it home, put it in a coffee can and decorate it with homemade ornaments.
That was our Christmas tradition.
I actually wrote about this in Boom Studios.

(01:07:03):
I did a book a few years ago celebrating the 65th anniversary.
You know what?
I'm going to post it on social media.
I'll post it on our website so people can download it for Christmas.

Michael (01:07:13):
That was a great story.

Jimmy (01:07:14):
Why don't we do that?
That'll be fun.

Harold (01:07:15):
That'll be cool.

Jimmy (01:07:17):
Thank you.

Michael (01:07:17):
That was the best story in the book.

Jimmy (01:07:19):
Thanks, Michael.
Now I got two Christmas presents already.
This is the best day ever.

Harold (01:07:29):
I have to confess that we have not one, but two Charlie Brown Christmas trees from CVS Drugstore.
After a move, we had lost the first one, and so we got the second one.
We put both of them up side by side.
They have been up all year atop our baker's rack in our living room, all decorated because we just weren't going to touch it.

(01:07:54):
And so we've been celebrating a Charlie Brown Christmas all year round.

Jimmy (01:07:58):
And now, just for clarity, this is pure laziness.
This is not actual interest in Charlie Brown Christmas 365.
Just being lazy.

Harold (01:08:07):
It's one of life's great mysteries.
I'm not going to parse that out.

Jimmy (01:08:18):
Awesome, okay.
December 20th, 1962.
Now Lucy's writing to Santa Claus.
She writes, Dear Santa Claus, I know you are a busy man.
I don't want you to waste your time thinking about what toys I might like.
Make it easy on yourself.
This year, just bring me money.
Preferably, 10s and 20s.

(01:08:39):
Now this is adapted into the same sequence with Sally writing the letter.

Harold (01:08:45):
Right, so it's this building on Charlie Brown as he's getting more and more disgusted as he's the secretary for Sally.

Michael (01:08:52):
Yeah.

Harold (01:08:52):
And then at the end of it.

Jimmy (01:08:52):
Those are both 1961 strips, so you could see him flipping through a reprint book or something.

Harold (01:08:57):
Yeah, and one of the most famous lines, at least for me, from the Christmas special is when Charlie Brown finally runs away in horror at hearing what his little sister is saying, and he just basically tosses the paper up in the air and runs away screaming, and then she just kind of turns to the camera and she goes, all I want is what's coming to me.

(01:09:18):

Jimmy (01:09:20):
A classic moment.
I have said that many, many, many times over the years.

Harold (01:09:25):
Yeah, me too.
That's a household thing that comes up a lot in our day-to-day conversation.

Jimmy (01:09:31):
Speaking of...

Harold (01:09:33):
Oh, there it is.

Jimmy (01:09:34):
November 17th, 1961.
Linus is posting a letter to Santa Claus with a great three-line US mailbox right there.
Lucy looks on saying, Are you sending those greedy letters to Santa Claus again?
Linus says, I'm not greedy.
And he turns to confront Lucy and says, All I want is what I have coming to me.

(01:09:55):
Lucy's outraged and says, Santa Claus doesn't owe you anything.
Linus begs to differ.
He does if I've been good.
That's the agreement.
Linus storms off saying, Any 10th grade student of commercial law could tell you that.
Lucy says, Oh, good grief.

Harold (01:10:15):
Again, so the interchangeability of lines and characters is really, really interesting that Schulz, he transfers this to, what year did you say this was?
It's not too far back from when they make it, right?

Jimmy (01:10:27):
It is 1961.

Harold (01:10:29):
61, okay, so Sally isn't yet in a position to do this, but the fact that it's transferred to Sally, it's very true to Sally, I think.
We haven't had a chance to talk a ton about Sally, the grown up Sally, but she's such an interesting character.
She certainly has a strong sense of self, right?
And she knows what it is that she wants and she sees the world differently than everyone else.

(01:10:53):
And she has this kind of, I don't know how you put it, but it's like, it's not selfish, but she sees things through her own lens that serves her own purpose.
And it seems like transferring that line and then just letting it lie there, that last, all I want is what I have coming to me, all I want is my fair share.

(01:11:15):
And it's not a punchline, it just kind of hovers in the air because it is part of Charlie Brown's building apprehension about how everything seems to be wrong about the holiday season.
It really works well.

Jimmy (01:11:32):
And I will again say, I think this is an improvement.
This isn't very Linus-y to me.
I mean, it is Linus as he's done it and Linus is a rich character who can do all these various things.
What I mean by that though is I think it's more effective when it's given to Sally.

Harold (01:11:48):
Yeah, it's chilling actually, when she says it.
I mean, there's something about it that is chilling.

Jimmy (01:11:53):
Because the thing that Sally, Sally actually sees through a lot of the BS, a lot of the baloney of the world, you know?
And she's like, no, this is the deal.
All I want is what's the problem.

Harold (01:12:05):
Yeah, she's not talking about lawyers here.
She's just, this is the way it is.
And we have to kind of absorb the fact that this is the way it is.
I mean, she's speaking with probably the most innocent voice at this point in the strip or in the special.
And yet this is the conclusion she's come to and how do you argue with it?

Jimmy (01:12:28):
Exactly.
March 27th, 1960, Charlie Brown has the whole gang over.
Looks like it's a rainy Sunday.
We see Schroeder, Patty, Lucy, Linus, Violet, Pigpen, Shermie and Snoopy all coming into Charlie Brown's house.
Charlie Brown decked out in his baseball cap greets them.
Hi, Snoopy.

(01:12:48):
Hi, Shermie.
Glad you made it.
Hi, Pigpen.
Hi, Violet.
How's the world's prettiest third base?
Third base?
Wow, no wonder you lose Charlie Brown.
Hi, Linus.
Hi, Lucy.
And by the way, calling her pretty.
Wow, Charlie Brown.

Michael (01:13:00):
Yeah, what's going on?
This is weird.

Jimmy (01:13:01):
Hi, Patty.
Hi, Schroeder.
How's the old throwing arm?
Charlie Brown addresses his team.
He says, Well, it's real good seeing you all here ready to begin the new baseball season.
Due to the rain today, we will follow the inclement weather schedule.
This means studying our signals.
Now, a good baseball team functions on the knowledge of its signals.
This year, we will try to keep them simple.

(01:13:23):
If I touch my cap like this, it means for whoever happens to be on base to try to steal.
If I clap in my hands, it means the batter is to hit straight away.
But if I put them on my hips, then he or she is to bunt.
If I walk up and down in the coaching box, it means for the batter to wait out the pitcher.
In other words, to try for a walk.
But now, after all is said and done, it must be admitted that signals alone never win a ball game.

(01:13:47):
It's the spirit of the team that counts, the interest that the players show in their team.
Am I right?
I said, am I right?
And we see a beat panel, and then we see Charlie Brown was basically talking to no one, as the whole team is now watching television instead.
And he just says to himself, you're right.
And sighs.

Michael (01:14:06):
How is this a Christmas strip?
This is an odd choice.

Harold (01:14:09):
It is an odd choice.

Jimmy (01:14:11):
Yeah, it's completely...

Harold (01:14:12):
And a very clever choice.

Jimmy (01:14:14):
Very clever, because what Charlie Brown is doing in this special is directing the Christmas Pageant.
And he has to deliver a speech like this basically to the whole group.
So he does a version of this.

Harold (01:14:26):
Yeah, so let's set this up.
So Lucy has decided after a psychiatric session that Charlie Brown needs involvement.
And so he should be involved in the Christmas Pageant.
So she deems that he should be the director of the Christmas Pageant.
So Charlie Brown is taking this on as it's a real honor.
Like I get to direct the Christmas Pageant, it's kind of like the baseball manager thing.

(01:14:50):
And so here he is all starry eyed that he's going to get to inspire a group of people as a director.
And he goes through this speech with very few changes, just saying, you know, as your director, I'll give you a motion that you should speed this up, slow this down, you know, that sort of thing in the play.
And nobody's listening.
And everyone is dancing to Linus and Lucy being played by Schroeder.

(01:15:16):
So, yeah, it's such a, this is fascinating that he, instead of writing something fresh, Schultz remembers this baseball thing and converts it so that he's adapting his own work for a different purpose rather than writing something fresh.

(01:15:37):
And, you know, what kind of encyclopedic memory he had of his own strip, I don't know.

Jimmy (01:15:41):
And, you know, but again, it comes back to this non-preciousness like going, all right, I'll take this and I'll, you know, strip it down for, use it for parts basically, right?

Harold (01:15:49):
Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like.

Michael (01:15:51):
The gag does not work, sorry to say.

Harold (01:15:54):
As a strip?

Michael (01:15:56):
Well, yeah, I mean, it's clearly, how can he not see that they've left?
He's looking at them.

Jimmy (01:16:05):
Well, that's, I think, why it really works better in the animated special, right?
Because it's predicated on the music, you know?
And Charlie Brown's like giving this speech, but the music then just builds up and bursts and suddenly everyone's dancing.
That does work, I think, better than they're just off watching TV three feet away from them.

Michael (01:16:27):
Yeah.
Well, there's something also very disturbing here.

Harold (01:16:31):
What's that?

Michael (01:16:31):
I thought Patty was blonde.
Why does she have red hair?

Jimmy (01:16:35):
They change that coloring throughout.
It's sometimes she's blonde.
Sometimes she's a brunette.
Sometimes she's almost not redhead, but it's like an auburn.
Yeah, I always my version of Patty was always a brunette.
She's a brunette in the special.
But when I went back and saw the original coloring, she was definitely a blonde.
Yeah, I don't know who or why that changed, but it changed in the strip too.

(01:16:59):
Who knows?
Oh, this is OK.
This is an off question.
But William Pepper, our our beloved pal and a fellow podcaster, had a weird question, Harold, in Charlie Brown, the anniversary book, the 25th, the Jubilee, the color illustrations are described as plates, like plate one, plate 25.

(01:17:21):
Do you have any idea why that would be?

Harold (01:17:24):
You know, I do have a little bit of insight into that.
So I don't and I don't know if whose choice that was.
That sounds like a graphic blandishment kind of thing on short part.
But it used to be when you printed a book on a press, is it because they used to be tipped in?
Exactly, because you would print everything in black and white or two color.

(01:17:45):
And then if you had full color, it would often be printed on like a nice glossy thick paper.
And it would have to be inserted between wherever a signature break was, like if you have a 16 or 32 page giant sheet of paper folded down into that size, that was all black and white.
And then you drop in a plate and maybe there's only one side that it's printed on because the press could only muster four colors on one side and a specialty press back when color was so expensive.

(01:18:14):
And so those would be called plates because yeah, they were tipped in sheets that were printed separately in color.

Jimmy (01:18:22):
So we're a full service podcast.

Harold (01:18:24):
I don't think that works in that book because I think they had to run that whole book through a four color press, the 25th anniversary book.
So the concept of a plate is a little bit archaic.
And I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was something that Schulz used because he was such an avid reader and loved books.
And so he wanted to have his things called plates.
That's my guess.

(01:18:45):
And the thing I'd like to mention on this strip is we see Shermie leading the pack into Charlie Brown's house in this baseball strip where Charlie Brown goes on talking about the directions for how to be a good team.
And Shermie becomes almost an in-joke in the Christmas special.

(01:19:06):
I don't think it's from the strip itself when they're handing out the parts for the Christmas special.
Was it Lucy's handing them out?

Jimmy (01:19:13):
Yes.

Harold (01:19:14):
And Shermie gets the part of a shepherd.
And do you remember the actual line he says, Jim?

Jimmy (01:19:22):
Every year it's the same thing.
I always end up being a shepherd, something like that.

Harold (01:19:26):
Yeah.
And it's like, oh, that's just so Shermie by 1965.

Jimmy (01:19:30):
Hey, my very first Christmas pageant, first grade, I was the third wise man.
I was on stage for about 45 seconds.
I said, what was my line?
These are the gifts we have brought to this holy child.

Harold (01:19:46):
I was a lost boy in Peter Pan in fourth grade.
Oh, when I was also Governor Clinton.
I don't know if I mentioned this before.
And when I was in Fairport, New York, we had the little pageant of the, you know, the founding of Fairport, New York.
And I was Governor Clinton, visiting this new little town that had just been started.
And I remember my, I still have this memory.

(01:20:08):
My sister was feeding me the lines, you know, so I would remember it.
Just like Lucy and Linus were doing it.
So I totally, totally relate to him having to memorize stuff for the Christmas pageant, because I remembered this.
And I remember my sister, she got into it.
And so she was like way overdoing her setup lines for me.

(01:20:28):
So she was supposed to be saying, evening, Governor.
And she was going, evening, Governor.
And I was supposed to come in and go, my, what a Fairport.
And there was a, that's it.
We're going to call the town Fairport.
And boy, that never forgotten that.

Jimmy (01:20:48):
Well, while we're reminiscing, I put the call out on social media and on my Twitter.
If anybody had any thoughts about Peanuts at Christmas.
And we got a couple hits.
Liz and Eric from PA actually, my home state, said they have a Peanuts cutouts that they put on their lawn every year, life-size Peanuts cutouts standing around the Christmas tree.

(01:21:12):
So that is one way.
Oh, Shaylee Robson from Canada, our super listener, she wrote and said that she likes to draw Charlie Brown and Snoopy on her Christmas card for her grandpa every year.
So that's very nice.
And if you guys are out there and you're thinking, hey, I want to start a new Christmas tradition or do something nice.

(01:21:33):
One thing that we love is if you, you know, while you're spending some holiday bucks and buying people presents, maybe swing by Unpacking Peanuts.
You can check out our store.
You can buy our new Unpacking Peanuts T-shirts, which I'm really happy with.
We have an Abbey Road style one, and we have the logo of the three of us at the thinking wall.

(01:21:53):
And in case you're wondering, it's left to right, Michael, me, then Harold.
We have a Patreon where you could sign up and you can sponsor us month by month, or you can also just buy us a mud pie and a.

(01:23:04):
Leg.

Michael (01:23:06):
So you're saying Snoopy's thoughts are not heard in the special?

Jimmy (01:23:13):
No, he's completely pantomime with some little, like, vocalizations done by Melendez, just like, ah, I can, oh.

Michael (01:23:20):
So there's no punchline on this?

Harold (01:23:24):
Well, right, so you basically have, you just have the interaction between Snoopy and Lucy, which at this point is a fight, right?
They get into a fight?
Am I getting that right?
And then, and so she's running all over the place, overreacting, Snoopy's just kind of sitting there, and then they do a zoom in on Snoopy, and he just goes, wah!

Jimmy (01:23:49):
It's very cute.

Harold (01:23:50):
So a different approach, but it is actually quite funny the way it's done.

Jimmy (01:23:55):
They do manage to make it work for animation, I think.
Again, you know, with his kind of very practical eye saying, how can we do this so that it will work in this medium?
And more often than not, it sure does work.

Harold (01:24:10):
And one of the best, if I'm not mistaken, and someone listening, if I'm wrong, please correct me.
Let us know, get on the, send us a message or whatever.
But I believe I heard someone say that a lot of the Snoopy stuff was animated by a guy named Bill Littlejohn, who had been involved in animation for years and years.
He was a real master and he had really nice flowing movement and animation.

(01:24:31):
And as hard as the kids are to animate in this kind of two-dimensional, you know, big head style, short arms, Snoopy is kind of a dream to animate because Schulz has stretched him every which way and people kind of expect that of Snoopy.
So he's very, very kind of rubbery animation character.
And there are a lot of opportunities for Snoopy.

(01:24:53):
He does his joyous happy dance on Schroeder's piano, getting into the raptured by the music.
And there's just a lot of lovely stuff at the opening.
They have they're on a pond and Snoopy is ice skating on his feet and just beautiful sweeping arcs.
And, you know, that's I understand is Bill Littlejohn's animation.

(01:25:13):
It's probably one of the best animators that Bill Melendez ever had on his staff.

Michael (01:25:17):
And he's a damn good archer.
Yeah, I beat you by like two seconds.

Jimmy (01:25:27):
January 5th, 1964.
Linus is watching television.
Lucy comes up saying, switch channels.
Linus ignores her.
Lucy is annoyed.
She says to him again, I said, switch channels.
I want to watch my program.
Linus turns around and says, are you kidding?
What makes you think you can just walk right in here and take over?
Lucy presents her fist to Linus saying, these five fingers.

(01:25:51):
Individually, they're nothing.
But when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.
Which channel do you want?
Says Linus.
Lucy sits down.
Linus sighs.
Then Linus looks at his own hand thinking, why can't you guys get organized like that?

Michael (01:26:09):
Panel five is like Stan Lee dialogue.

Jimmy (01:26:13):
Oh, it really is.
That's so funny.

Harold (01:26:17):
Do you think Schulz was still buying comics and reading Stan Lee?
I think it's entirely possible.

Jimmy (01:26:21):
What year was this?
Oh, yeah, there was 64.
Yeah, it could have been.
It's really funny when you look at it like that.
Melendez must have liked this as a union guy.

Harold (01:26:34):
Yeah, they really do shorten this for the gag is different and again, in the special where I think she says, he's like, give me a reason or whatever.

Jimmy (01:26:47):
He says, give me one good reason why I should memorize these lines and she says, I'll give you five good reasons.
One, two, three, four, five.
And as she does, she curls each one of her fingers into a fist.
And then Linus says, go ahead.

Harold (01:27:01):
Classic Linus line goes, those are good reasons.

Jimmy (01:27:07):
December 17th, 1961.
We see Linus as a candle in a wreath in a decorative opening panel.
His head is the flame.
Then we cut to their living room.
It's Linus and Lucy and Linus says, Oh, no, don't tell me not again.
Lucy walks up holding a piece of paper, presents it to Linus and says, Here's your piece for the Christmas program.

(01:27:29):
Linus reads it.
So the words spoken through Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled.
A voice was heard in Rama, wailing and loud laments.
It was Rachel weeping for her children and refusing all consolation because they were no more.
Good grief.
Lucy walks away.
Linus looks after her.
Lucy says, Memorize it and be ready to recite it by next Sunday.

(01:27:52):
Linus yells after Lucy, I can't memorize something like this in a week.
This is going to take research.
Linus continues.
Who was Jeremiah?
Where was Rama?
Why was Rachel so upset?
He follows Lucy saying, You can't recite something until you know the who, the where and the why.
Lucy looks at Linus and says, I'll tell you the who, the where and the why.

(01:28:16):
You start memorizing right now or you'll know who is going to slug you and you'll know where she's going to slug you and you'll know why she slugged you.
Linus says, Looking very upset.
Christmas is not only getting too commercial, it's getting too dangerous.
A classic line.
Listen, I have to say, I have a lot of sympathy for Lucy's management style.

(01:28:39):
I see nothing wrong with this at all.
Other thoughts, counterpoints?

Michael (01:28:48):
I've been on the wrong side of your five fingers.

Jimmy (01:28:54):
Now, not literally.

Michael (01:28:55):
Pretty much.

Jimmy (01:28:59):
Makes sense.
You know what?
People don't like conflict, as Tina Fey says, but it gets stuff done.

Harold (01:29:06):
It is so funny that he's writing this here.
It's in the 60s, early 60s, but not the year this was done.
To Michael's point, you have these kids reading these lines and they don't know what they mean.
Here's Linus complaining about that very thing.
I need to know what I'm saying and why I'm saying it and in these animated specials, the kids are, I guess, reading this pretty cold and they don't know necessarily what the meaning is of everything that they're saying.

(01:29:36):
It's interesting that he's got it in this strip, that Linus is complaining about that concept, that he's asked to say something without understanding it.

Jimmy (01:29:44):
November 26, 1959.
Patty and Charlie Brown are viewing Pigpen, who's just sitting there minding his own business.
Charlie Brown says, Did it ever occur to you that Pigpen might be carrying the dirt and dust of some past civilization?
They come in closer to scrutinize Pigpen, who just looks baffled by the little thing.

(01:30:06):
Charlie Brown says, Notice how the dust clings to him.
Then Patty and Charlie Brown walk away.
As Charlie Brown says, He could have on him some of the soil of ancient Babylon.
Pigpen yells after them, Sort of makes you want to treat me with more respect, doesn't it?
Great Pigpen line.

Michael (01:30:24):
It's good because really Charlie Brown will...
Pigpen is the only one Charlie Brown can actually mock.
He gets mocked all the time, but he has the...

Harold (01:30:33):
Is he mocking him?

Michael (01:30:34):
Oh, yeah.

Jimmy (01:30:35):
You think?

Michael (01:30:36):
I think.

Jimmy (01:30:37):
I think they're just legitimately thinking these things.

Harold (01:30:41):
And I will say in the Christmas special, when you get to hear the nuance of it, it's set up that Charlie Brown is quite sincere as the director of this play.
Maybe you could say he's, as the director of the play, is saying something that's ever going to serve him as the director, but he is giving Pigpen the honor of this versus it being something that he's poking fun at him for.

Jimmy (01:31:01):
Well, it's also, though, significantly rewritten in the special.
So there is...
This very conversation could have happened in between, you know, between, say, Mendelsohn, Melendez and Schulz.
What is this?
What is this joke?
And it's been rewritten to clarify that it's really there to give Pigpen the opportunity to say, hey, see, I do deserve some respect.

(01:31:24):
It is much clearer when you see it animated than it is here.
And I'm sure I saw it animated before I read it here.
So I would never be able to even view it with Michael's eyes.

Harold (01:31:36):
Right.
Yeah, it's coloring the way we see this line.
And, you know, Schulz...
We heard that Schulz really couldn't stand bullying, and it seems like with Charlie Brown, after we get into so many years into the strip, Schulz couldn't bear for him to have a line that would be sarcastic about somebody else.

(01:31:57):
It's like somehow Charlie Brown was to embody that, you know, that he's been so put upon himself that he's not going to do it himself.
So I'm looking at it, I think, through that lens as well.
But it almost looks here like Schulz is leaving it to go either way.
Because just the looks on the characters, you've got kind of an innocent smile on Patty there with Charlie Brown.

(01:32:21):
Patty is known for being kind of snarky herself.
It's interesting that it's Patty, or maybe it's because Schulz wanted somebody who you didn't think too much about what she's thinking because you don't know her as well as Lucy or Linus or whatever.
But anyway, yeah, I could see how you could read it either way.

Jimmy (01:32:38):
Well, that is a genius thing that Schulz says, and we've talked about this many times over all the episodes, where you can look at it both ways.
And it's funny both ways.
Very strange and really special and unique to Peanuts.
I don't think there's that much nuance in Beetle Bailey.
Like, did Sarge really mean to stomp on Beetle Bailey?

(01:33:00):
You know what I mean?
There is the way, the combination of the subjects he's writing and the way he draws them leaves a little room for, a significant amount of room for the reader to put themselves, which is really great.

Harold (01:33:13):
Yeah, and Michael, in the Christmas special, it's Frida complaining that all of the dust is going to ruin her naturally curly hair.
So he again mixes up our characters in the special.

Jimmy (01:33:27):
We really see the difference in how Pig Pan is drawn when we look at this next strip in sequence, because we're going back in time and we see January 7th, 1956.
And we see a very different looking earlier version of Pig Pan standing outside as Violet approaches holding a mirror.

(01:33:47):
And she says, Pig Pan, you're an absolute mess.
Here, I want you to look at yourself in this mirror, she says, presenting him the mirror.
Pig Pan does so.
And Violet says, now, aren't you ashamed?
And Pig Pan says, like a boss, on the contrary, I didn't think I looked that good.
I have stolen this line for my life at many, many different times.

Harold (01:34:10):
I have too.
And Jeff Ornstein was the voice of the first Pig Pan, and I think he just nails it.
It's got this sense of detached self-confidence.
It's not superiority, even though he kind of has this haughty look on his face, but he's just like, he's standing up for himself on the highest level.

(01:34:34):
And it's so funny.

Jimmy (01:34:37):
Okay, I skipped, there's a big sequence that we're not going to, a few sequences of Sally and Linus.
It's sort of tangentially in the specials.
It's not exactly the way it is, though.
So we're going to skip those, and we're going to go to February 19th, 1962.
Lucy leans over to Charlie Brown and says, Do you think I'm beautiful, Charlie Brown?

(01:35:01):
And panel two, Lucy says, You didn't answer right away.
You had to think about it, didn't you?
Lucy continues, If you had really thought I was beautiful, you would have spoken right up.
Lucy is now ranting, I know when I've been insulted.
I know when.
Charlie Brown says, Good grief.

Harold (01:35:17):
And this animates and with the voice, just beautifully.
Again, one of those classic lines.
And yeah, it certainly in day to day conversation, these lines come up so often in our household.

Jimmy (01:35:32):
December 5th and 6th of 1963 is where we get the famous.
We all know that Christmas is a big commercial racket.
It's run by a big Eastern syndicate, you know.
And you know all about big Eastern syndicates.
If you've heard our 1959 episode where Harold explains that in depth.
And if you haven't, you got to go listen to it.
Give yourself a Christmas present.
Listen to that one.

Harold (01:35:52):
And I think that's one that Peter Robbins, the first voice of Charlie Brown said.
That was one of the lines that he remembered mystified him when it was being read.
It's like, what on earth are we talking about here?

Jimmy (01:36:05):
I always thought it was like an organized crime reference, which I guess it kind of is.
Anyway, I forget it.

Harold (01:36:10):
Yeah.
Well, that's the thing.
It's only weird comics people that would think of syndicates as newspaper syndicates.
But as a little kid, I was always in there.

Michael (01:36:21):
Well, there goes your shot at having a syndicated strip, Jimmy.

Jimmy (01:36:25):
I think that ship had sailed.
July 28th, 1963.
Lucy is hanging out at Schroeder's Piano.
Schroeder's practicing and Lucy says, Beethoven.
Everybody talks about how great Beethoven was.
Beethoven wasn't so great.
This gets Schroeder's attention.
What do you mean Beethoven wasn't so great?

(01:36:46):
Lucy says he never got his picture on bubblegum cards, did he?
Have you ever seen his picture on bubblegum cards?
Schroeder walks away.
He's so upset by this.
Lucy continues.
How can you say someone is great who's never had his picture on bubblegum cards?
That's what I mean when I say Beethoven wasn't so great, she says, yelling after Schroeder who's left.

(01:37:07):
Then she leans back on the piano, very sad, a smile on her face, and she says, this has been a good day.

Michael (01:37:15):
She's a troll.

Harold (01:37:17):
Yeah, right.
She's totally pressing his buttons, as we know, because she doesn't even want her Joe Schlebotnik bubblegum card when she's, Charlie Brown's begging here for it.
She has no stock in bubblegum cards.
How does this joke change in the Christmas special, Jimmy?

(01:37:37):
Do you think it's better in the strip or do you think it's better in the special?

Jimmy (01:37:41):
I actually think it's a wash.
I think it works both ways pretty well.
Although, there is something really special about this last drawing of Lucy looking so self-satisfied.
I kind of missed that.
But yeah, I'm going to say both.
I like them both ways.

Harold (01:37:59):
Yeah, me too.

Jimmy (01:38:01):
Then we move on and we have Snoopy.
On December 30, 1956, we have Snoopy dancing on top of Schroeder's piano, which is brilliantly and beautifully animated, as Harold discussed earlier.
Then we have December 24, 1964.
Linus is decked out in shepherd's gear on a stage in front of a red curtain.

(01:38:24):
Snoopy is by his side, just lying on his stomach, kind of looking asleep.
Linus says the famous line, And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Then Linus, out of the corner of his mouth, whispers to Snoopy, Psst, flock.
Snoopy wakes up and says, Baah, goes back to sleep.

(01:38:46):
And of course, while not exactly how it plays out in the episode, the episode does feature as its climax, if not its conclusion.
Linus reciting the Gospel of St.
Luke, which of course was a very surprising and controversial take at the time.
But Schulz does it in a way that is, well, he has Linus.

(01:39:08):
This is Linus' stuff.
This is the stuff Linus thinks about and talks about.
And it's natural to his character.
Linus doesn't proselytize anything about it.
Charlie Brown asks the question, what's Christmas about?
And Linus says that.

Harold (01:39:21):
Yeah.
And Bill Melendez, he said when Schulz first brought it up in their very first meeting, as you might expect, he said, we can't do that.
It's too religious.
And he said, Schulz reply was, Bill, if we don't do it, who else can?
We're the only ones who can do it.
But when you think about Schulz 15 years in the public eye and all of the choices that he made, and again, that personal integrity, that if this is what Schulz wants to say, we kind of want him to say it, right?

(01:39:53):
And I think that's because he somehow managed to share who he was, and you just kind of wanted to know what Schulz had to say.
And it doesn't feel like it's tacked on or it doesn't feel like it's artificial or forced.

Jimmy (01:40:10):
An artist at this level has to be allowed to say what they want to say.
And you know, like at the thousands of these comic strips and reaching out to millions and millions and millions of people, you know, he has earned the right and the trust that he's not going to blow up the property with some crazy thing.

(01:40:30):
You know, he's going to do it with the class and integrity.
He does everything else.
And that's exactly what he did.
And it really works.

Harold (01:40:39):
And I think, you know, I don't know when he says, Bill, if we don't do it, who else can?
But I think if he had said, if I can't do it, who else can?
I think there's a lot of truth to that because he earned 15 years into his career the right to have that little one minute in his Christmas special.
And that's what he said from the very beginning.
He wanted the Christmas special to be.

(01:41:01):
And you look at the arc of the special about, you know, being too commercial and then it ends with the Christmas tree.
In some ways, it's got its own kind of almost dreamlike flow.
Yeah, that's the thing about this special that has fascinated me from childhood.

(01:41:22):
And in a way, I feel like, you know, I've been thinking and asking myself, why is this special to me the greatest half hour of television?
You know, the desert island thing, if I could save one half hour of television, this is it.
Why is that?
What is it about this special that gets this loyalty from me?
And this is very personal for me.

(01:41:42):
This is just my perspective.
But I think in my life, I've grown into this Christmas special, if that makes any sense.
You know, every flaw and every idiosyncrasy is a delight.
There are things like that that I can say that I also feel the same way.
I mean, working on Mystery Science Theatre, if anybody's ever seen that show, Joel Hodson was the original host, and he was often kind of down on himself of flubbing his lines or, you know, they're shooting with one camera.

(01:42:11):
You can't fake the editing.
And so he would give himself these impossible things to perform.
There were like three minutes long, a song while he's beating a lemur puppet on these cameras.
He's got these characters around him.
And it's like watching somebody on a roller coaster or just doing an acrobatic stunt, and he's stumbling and he's almost falling off the rails, and it's absolutely delightful.

(01:42:36):
Well, I think there's something to that in this special that, you know, what it is and how humble it is as a special and how, you know, limited it is in its animation, and it has all of these flaws that they didn't have time to fix.
And yet every flaw somehow is delightful.
It's like it's part of the special.
It's part of what the special is and what it says.

(01:42:58):
And I marvel at it just like I marvel at Schulz's strips, that this wasn't just Schulz.
This was a whole team of people getting behind Schulz.
And, you know, my personal experience is that I went from a shy, fearful teenager in high school, you know, talking about Linus and Charlie Brown saying, you know, they fear of everything.
You know, I can relate to that as a kid.

(01:43:20):
And, you know, I was in high school and college.
That's the way I was until all hell broke loose, you know, that in my life.
And I was confronted with this, this God who I no longer thought was non-existent or distant or a cosmic jerk.
But this sweet, lovely person, gentle and humble in heart, absolutely delightful.

(01:43:43):
And I can't imagine a God better than that one that I'm discovering.
And it totally fits this little moment at the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas.
I think that's why I relate to it so much is you have this sweet little lisping six-year-old cartoon character telling of the Savior being born in a cattle trough.
And that all I can say is yes.

(01:44:04):
Yeah.

Jimmy (01:44:06):
Well, thank you for sharing that.
I would quickly like to say that for just before we get too far into the philosophy of it all, cosmic jerk, new band name.
I called it, but no, I know what you're saying.
I had a very different experience growing up.
I went to Catholic school and, you know, religion was always part of my life.
But this, so this is, this will tell you what you need to know about me.

(01:44:29):
This probably is my favorite TV special or TV half hour of all time.
My other favorite movie, my favorite grownup movie is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino.
And there are two moments in art.
One is when Linus comes out and says, lights, please, and recites the Gospel of St.
Luke.
And the other is when Brad Pitt is smashing the hippie murderer's head into the fireplace.

(01:44:55):
When I sit there, experience this art, I think, you know what, everything's going to be all right.
Those are the two moments.
Everything's going to be all right.
And I'm so grateful that Mr.
Schulz made the art that makes the world all right, at least while you're experiencing it.

(01:45:18):
And I am beyond grateful that I get to experience it every week with you guys, to my best friends in the world, my other wonderful, beloved friend Liz, and all of you listeners out there who are tuning in every week in greater and greater numbers, not for us, but because we love Peanuts and we love Charles Schulz.

(01:45:39):
So that's it for us right now.
Please review us, please visit our website.
You can check us out on Patreon.
We're at Unpacked Peanuts on both Instagram and Twitter.
They're both still things when this posts.
So please do all that.
But otherwise, whatever you're celebrating, have it be wonderful and filled with love and happiness and have a great beginning of the new year.

(01:46:03):
Harold, to you, Merry Christmas, my friend.
Michael and Liz, Happy St.
Dagobare's Day.
And to the rest of you out there, be of good cheer.
Be of good cheer.

Liz (01:46:16):
Unpacking Peanuts is copyrighted by Jimmy Gownley, Michael Cohen, and Harold Buchholz.
Produced and edited by Liz Sumner.
Music by Michael Cohen.
Additional voiceover by Aziza Shukralla Clark.
For more from the show, follow Unpacked Peanuts on Instagram and threads.
Unpacking Peanuts on Facebook, Blue Sky, and YouTube.

(01:46:37):
For more about Jimmy, Michael, and Harold, visit unpackingpeanuts.com.
Have a wonderful day, and thanks for listening.

VO (01:46:45):
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

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