The Genius of Charles Schulz and The Peanuts’ Christmas Power by Katherine Quaranta

My dad is a visual artist and child of the 70s. The Peanuts mean worlds more to him than they ever could to me, but like he’s conditioned my love for the Yankees, he’s also imparted a sentimental feeling towards Chuck and the gang. 

Whenever we watch a special together (at least twice per coordinating holiday month), at every new frame he remarks on the art. It’s the same thing every time, but I let him sing the old tune. These reflections become just as ceremonial as the act of watching itself. He talks the water color skies that stand still despite the movement around them, the shoelaces made with a single stroke and two twirls of a pen, Snoopy's depth of expression somehow hatched by a line or two. And every time, no matter how many times we’ve seen it, or how many times he knows I've heard it, he says, “These guys really knew what they were doing.” 

*

75 years and far too many department store merchandising deals later, the tropes the specials are infused with remain timeless. The characters’ adorable-ness in tandem with their rich, beyond- their-years (or species) personalities creates a piece of work that is, to me, unrivaled, I know I run the risk of saying something that’s been said a million times before, but the series just about ensures every viewer can see themselves or someone they know in Schulz's creation (characters that, hilariously, despite their worldly wisdom and borderline depressive tendencies, are supposed to be eight years old). There will always be a Lucy in life; a smirking someone waiting on a bent knee with a finger on the ball. 

And thus these specials are a study of the human condition wrapped up in seasonal sentimentality. (See the for-profit psychiatric booth featured in A Charlie Brown Christmas). It's remarkable to me that families around the country, in the midst of holiday cheer, decide to throw on the classic just to hear Charlie Brown drop a line like, “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy."  Of course, part of what makes the Peanuts gold is this exact sentiment. And needless to say, that stupid little christmas tree does embody the spirit of the holidays. What I remain stuck on though is the expert simplicity of Schulz's language, both in the newspaper cartoons and TV iterations he wrote. His ability to form a phrase that evokes an instinctual chuckle immediately followed by a sense of sorrow is masterful.

Especially as we grow older, we begin to understand Charlie Brown's melancholic attitude during the holidays more and more. The reality that the magic begins to fade with every year is eased by Schulz’s representation. He reminds us we’re not alone. That despite how it may feel, you’re not the only one to feel an emptiness in the abundance of the holidays. To be seen and heard by Charlie Brown on Christmas is a right of passage.   

*

Many of the lines Schulz penned go over our heads as children, and then suddenly, one day, they hit us right over the head as adults. It feels obvious to me now that these works were tailored to grow up with their child audiences and to hit home for the adults that watched alongside them. 

The Peanuts functions in this way especially for people of our Generation Z. Perhaps I'm overestimating just how widely the specials are watched here, but for those of us in our early 20s, many of our parents were young but conscious children when the best of the Peanuts were being cranked out. It's only right they’d play the same specials every holiday season, so that one year, when we’re old enough, we hear Guaraldi’s score and feel a twinge of recognition; a nostalgia for something we didn’t even know we missed. 

But there is a kind of nostalgia I am acutely aware of, one I obsess over every holiday season. My yearning for yesteryear fills me with dread for tomorrow. The loss of my own childlike wonder, the passage of time, anticipatory grief – I can’t handle any of it knowing the holidays will only get worse, or harder, from here. That the symphony of our kitchen on Christmas Eve will, inevitably, be missing key melodies. That a certain cologne will be absent in the potpourri that makes up an Italian-American household on Christmas. That the table will not be full. 

But as everything around me begins to change, the Peanuts remain the same. This kind of music never dies. For 30 minutes, I can feel the Christmas of the past I’m constantly mulling over. Schulz’s creation serves as a deeply necessary constant. It fills the empty spaces. It surmounts space and time, allowing for one to feel home no matter how far, and making space for generations to meet again. 

Those guys really did know what they were doing, after all.