FEATURE:
A Soundtrack for the Ages
IMAGE CREDIT: United Feature Syndicate
The Magic of A Charlie Brown Christmas
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BACK in 2015…
IMAGE CREDIT: Charles M. Schulz
A Charlie Brown Christmas turned fifty. I will bring in an article that pays tribute and shines the spotlight on a wonderful animated special. It derived from Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts strip. This was the first time characters from that universe were brought to life through the medium of T.V. Making its debut on 9th December, 1965, we find Charlie Brown depressed as Christmas approaches. Lucy van Pelt (the older sister of Linus and Rerun; she is opinionated and bossy in the Peanuts strip) encourages Charlie to direct a neighbourhood Christmas play, yet this is met with mocking and derision. It all looks lost for Charlie Brown. Linus van Pelt (Charlie Brown’s best friend and the younger brother of Lucy) explains to Charlie the true meaning of Christmas and all the Peanuts gang. There is a lot to unpack regarding the messages and plot of A Charlie Brown Christmas. When Charlie and Linus head to the frozen pond, Charlie confides in Linus he is still depressed. After visiting Lucy’s psychiatric booth, she advises him to direct a nativity play but, whilst that advice is sound, her concerns are more material: she wants real estate but is always getting toys. On his way to the auditorium, Charlie Brown sees his beloved Snoopy decorating his doghouse and Sally (Charlie’s younger sister) dictating a letter to Santa – thinking how much she can get.
Charlie arrives to find to find fake trees and gaudiness. Charlie is convinced a little decorated tree will be more special than the aluminium trees. Charlie asks what the meaning of Christmas is and, being surrounded by a lot of selfishness, he is dejected. After Linus explains the true (biblical) meaning of Christmas, the children realise they were tough on Charlie – scorning him and turning their noses up at him. The tree Charlie chooses is drooping and not as magnificent as the fake ones. Linus helps repair the tree whilst others grab decorations from the doghouse; the tree grows bigger and Lucy even comes around to Charlie’s choice. They all sing Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Charlie returns to find his small tree is now a magnificent thing. It is not surprise A Charlie Brown Christmas was a hit and so many people tuned into watch back in 1965. A Charlie Brown Christmas became a staple in the U.S., and I am not surprised! I think there are a few interesting takeaways from the special. We have ended a year that has been pretty tough and challenging. Politics has divided us all and we head in 2020 with uncertainty. Whilst mine and many other people’s Christmases will be full of presents and excess, I think many of us have been made depressed by the same things. It seems like all is a bit hopeless at the moment but I have heard about so many people donating to charity and helping the homeless.
PHOTO CREDIT: @tomzzlee/Unsplash
Living in London, I have seen so many people changing their mood and helping other people. Maybe it is just a Christmas spirit, but rather than get depressed and tired by division and hate, this time of year should be about acceptance and understanding. I think A Charlie Brown Christmas Special is a wonderful show that is relevant now and will always be so. It is okay to embrace the commercialism of Christmas, but now is a time when the truer meaning of Christmas – in the sense of acceptance and love – should be taken to heart and spread. Social media can be a poisonous and horrible place, so I wonder whether all of us need to be more aware of the effects of negative words and argument. It may sound schmaltzy, but I there is a lot we can learn from A Charlie Brown Christmas. I do think we can all be a bit kinder and more charitable. Whilst it is okay to open presents and enjoy the big day, I think a togetherness and sense of greater understanding is what we need moving forward. If you want to know more about Peanuts, there is a great documentary here, and I wanted to talk about the music and how A Charlie Brown Christmas was scored. The messages and charm is one thing, but the music featured is brilliant. I will bring in a Pitchfork article from 2015 that poured a lot of love on the soundtrack; Pitchfork also spoke with musicians who recounted their memories of A Charlie Brown Christmas:
“And then there was the soundtrack, composed by jazz piano impresario Vince Guaraldi along with Fred Marshall on double bass and the great Jerry Granelli on drums. “We did the music in a day and a half, two days,” Granelli tells me. “That’s just how you recorded records back then.” These days, it’s quite possibly the most ubiquitous and universally lauded holiday album out there, not to mention the gateway for generations of children who would go onto explore the bottomless chasm of the jazz idiom. Yet for the network suits expecting some Burl Ives-type maximalism, Guaraldi's quaint score was deemed too weird and dark, even though the soundtrack—released on the Fantasy label right around the time the special aired on TV—received rave reviews by such legendary critics as Nat Hentoff, who in 2010 wrote a beautiful tribute to Guaraldi in JazzTimes.
Vince Guaraldi Trio's Jerry Granelli
Part of the magic of the whole thing is that nobody had any big plans while making the soundtrack, like, “This is it!” We just played, man. It’s a jazz record. It was pretty natural and real. People heard the heart in it. Honestly, I turned left creatively with my career after that and never thought about it for a while; jazz musicians are sometimes not as open as they may seem when it comes to people having hits or things crossing over—everybody gets all uppity. But then I matured enough to realize that it went way beyond music. It was the first entry point to jazz for a lot of people. And now that I’ve got my credentials as an artist, I’m proud and delighted to be a part of it”.
Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves
I've only seen A Charlie Brown Christmas about four or five times, but I know the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack back and forth. And I know that record so well because I basically was Charlie Brown growing up. I was a nerdy kid who couldn't really do anything right. And I was always a singer in the choir as a kid, all the way up through high school. I was the lead in the musicals in the all-state choir and the all-state jazz choir and in opera competitions. And I was weird and mopey, and shit often went totally awry. So, for me, A Charlie Brown Christmas is very much just about Charlie Brown, who gets shit on by his classmates for being a weirdo. Its soundtrack was my soundtrack.
Veruca Salt’s Louise Post
As a kid growing up in the ’70s, seeing a cartoon of children dealing with anxiety and depression was illuminating and liberating. We were all finding our way through those perplexing years, navigating a path through the world of adults—my parents divorced when I was eight after years of unrest—and here was a world made up exclusively of children, expressing their feelings, having their own experience. It was for us. It became sacred. I also felt a closeness with the Peanuts characters, as if they were my childhood friends, and I related to the sibling relationship of Lucy and Linus. I played piano, like Schroeder, and my father was a psychiatrist, so he and Lucy had that in common. Snoopy was my favorite character, and my stuffed Snoopy was with me all throughout childhood and beyond. In college, I got the soundtrack, and it gets played on repeat every Christmas. And now that I have a little girl, we watch the special every year again, too.
It is the time of year where we remember others in addition to swapping presents and being with family. It may sound like a tenuous link, but A Charlie Brown Christmas’ endless spirit and true message seems more relevant and powerful now than it did in 1965. From its sensational music to its heart-warming story, I do think we can all go into 2020 with a fuller heart and a determination to bond together and make the world a better place.
This Christmas, give some money a homeless person or charity; ask someone in need how they are and, next year, think about the efforts needed to improve the environment and world around us – perhaps this goes back to A Charlie Brown Christmas and Charlie wanting a natural small tree rather than something more harmful and less biodegradable. It seems like we all have the potential to make the world better and bring more love into – off the back of a year that has been pretty tough. Of course, the musical element of A Charlie Brown Christmas is a big reason I am here; the majestic nature of the songs and, as we can see above, how (the music) has connected with so many artists. I shall leave things here but, as we approach Christmas Day and wonder what we are all getting, we should take a moment to look around us and help those in need; spend some of our time and money on others (away from family) and think ahead. It has been a good year away from all the bad stuff, but next year will throw up its challenges. I think we will all resolutely combine and commit to helping people and making our world a finer place. I was compelled to write this feature after seeing A Charlie Brown Christmas and, over fifty years after its release, this divine offering is still…
CHANGING the world.