I try to be a pretty understanding guy. If I disagree with you then I will at least make an effort to hear out the reasons for your beliefs. But if you try to argue with me that something other than A Charlie Brown Christmas is the greatest Christmas special of all time, then I will fight you because you are so egregiously and terribly wrong.
I love A Charlie Brown Christmas. I love the soundtrack, the rough around the edges animation, the voice work, the continuity quirks, and, most of all, its heart. It is imperfectly perfect. For a Christmas service that I planned in college, the clip of Linus quoting the Gospel of Luke served as the de facto Call to Worship. The first (and thus far only) Advent sermon I ever preached heavily referenced the Peanuts gang and the theme of hope in the face of pretty terrible people. Though it's a cartoon, it is a spiritual touchstone for me every Christmas season.
When I sat down to watch the special this year, I realized something that I had never noticed before. A Charlie Brown Christmas never makes it to Christmas. Most holiday specials like Frosty the Snowman and How the Grinch Stole Christmas find their resolution on Christmas Day. Rudolph is an exception, because Santa's whole deal is Christmas Eve. Even still, the overwhelming majority of Christmas specials pivot around December 24 and 25.
Not Charlie Brown. It takes place in this nebulous time somewhere in December. We don't know when. The kids are still working on a Christmas play. Sally is writing a letter to Santa Claus, which suggests we're several days if not weeks out. Christmas is coming, but it never actually gets here before the special is over. The whole story ends up being about the anticipation of Christmas. The holiday is in the air, but hasn't arrived. That's when it struck me: A Charlie Brown Christmas is a story about Advent.
When I started watching the special through that lens, I began to see things in a new light. The cruelty of others towards Charlie Brown suddenly had more resonance. I mean, it doesn't excuse the fact that Lucy is the absolute worst, but the shadow side of Advent's hope is the realization that this world is a pretty screwed up place. How long, O Lord, must Charlie Brown be called a blockhead?
I mentioned last week that there is this time-travel vibe to Advent. With that in mind, I started to consider the weird continuity errors: the way Charlie Brown's tree gains and loses branches, how Linus magically has on his coat before he is even asked to come look for a tree. It gives the special this weird, unmoored quality; like what is happening is floating through time (which is appropriate considering we watch this year after year). Things are changing yet somehow staying the same. One of the lessons of history is that it has both a nasty and beautiful way of repeating itself with variations.
The weirdness and the darkness only enhance the hope that is proclaimed by Linus. Just as Advent recognizes the darkness of the world and counters with the Good News of Jesus, Linus meets his friend in the pit and offers this Good News and "peace, goodwill toward men." Charlie Brown is lifted by the hope of what Linus says and is able to trudge through the waiting a little longer.
At least, Charlie Brown trudges through until he cannot. He hangs a decoration on the tree and thinks that he killed it (by the way, huge failure on the part of Charlie Brown's science teacher concerning botany). This time, the entire gang rallies him by showing compassion and singing about the Good News. Another thing about Advent? It happens annually because we have to be reminded again and again about the hope that we have in God. We need to hear the story again. We need to show and be shown the compassion representative of the Incarnation. We need to sing the songs.
There's one last quirk. When the special originally aired, it was sponsored by Coca-Cola and when the Peanuts gang was singing "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing," there was a voiceover wishing people a Merry Christmas from their local Coca-Cola bottler (which is odd for a special with such a strong anti-commercialism streak). In subsequent airings that blurb was obviously removed, which led to there being this weird sort of fade out to the song. The carol doesn't quite make it to the end. The special ends with an ellipses. The story keeps going. They're singing "Glory to the newborn king," but Christmas is still coming. That's Advent.
I know that I am reading into this stuff; especially the weird metaphysical musings on why the number of branches on the Christmas tree keeps changing. Schultz and company were just trying to put out the best Christmas special that they could. And they completely succeeded in spite of errors they probably would have liked to do without. Yet during this season of Advent, it sure is fun to find these unintentional ways in which it speaks to this Already, but Not Yet time. Just another reason why A Charlie Brown Christmas is the best Christmas special ever.
