50 years ago at 7:30 pm Charlie Brown made his official TV debut on CBS to remind us the meaning of Christmas......


What's your memory of seeing that special for the first time?

I'm probably one of the few here that can remember seeing this the first time it was ever aired. Everyone in my family was already a big fan of Peanuts. I remember my father cutting out the daily comics and saving them in a big notebook. Still, we didn't really know what to expect when it first came on. But we were charmed, and from that year on, our Christmas wasn't complete without seeing "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

I think the first time I saw it was Christmas 1993, when I was five years old. It was a bit unusual seeing it at first, as I was a bit more used to newer (post-1969) Peanuts productions than that. Ever since then, I've always loved it. But back when CBS would air it, they showed it time-compressed, and with the "throwing snowballs at the can" bit deleted. It wasn't until I saw a home video version when I saw it a bit closer on how it was originally presented. And I used to be always confused on how it'd fade out the audio right before the "THE END" screen...

And to celebrate, here's a review I did of the "Charlie Brown Christmas" book-and-audio read-along as the Big Bad Wolf (since Disney distributed the Peanuts read-alongs in the late 70s and early 80s...)

And to celebrate, here's a review I did of the "Charlie Brown Christmas" book-and-audio read-along as the Big Bad Wolf (since Disney distributed the Peanuts read-alongs in the late 70s and early 80s...)

I never knew Disney released the Peanuts read-alongs during those times.

The first time I remember watching "A Charlie Brown Christmas", I was very little...and I can't say it left much of an impression on me, outside of the very end.

I've watched bits and pieces of it over the years, but (believe it or not) it was only last year that I truly watched the special in its entirety for the first time. (I've had it on DVD as part of the Peanuts Holiday Collection for a few years, but I put off actually watching it...so it kept sitting there, unopened.) I found it interesting and likable; I'll probably revisit it this year. (And all the years after, even.)

---