Jazz, joy and one ragged Christmas tree: 60 years of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

Sixty years ago — on Dec. 9, 1965 — a holiday special launched a new Christmas tradition. A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered, and it would become a beloved annual broadcast.

For decades viewers gathered to watch down-on-his-luck 8-year-old Charlie Brown, the star of the Peanuts comic strip, navigate the true meaning of Christmas. It was the first of many Charlie Brown holiday specials to come.

In 1995, Peanuts creator Charles Schulz spoke with NPR’s Bob Edwards, reflecting on the specific vision he had for this animated special.

The following exchange has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

Charles Schulz: When we first started doing the commercial Peanuts characters, some of the advertising people thought we should use adults imitating children, but that didn’t work at all. And then we had to decide whether Snoopy should talk, because he doesn’t really talk, he just thinks in the comic strip. So I insisted that we didn’t try to give Snoopy a voice. And then of course, I think the biggest decision — which we’ve forgotten all about now — is the fact that I said no laugh track. I don’t think we have to be told when and where to laugh.

Bob Edwards: And we knew what cartoon music sounded like.

Schulz: Yeah. Remember the old cartoon music with the saxophones and things like that?

Edwards: Lots of sound effects.

Schulz: This was different. You know, Vince Guaraldi — who died, unfortunately, a few years ago — is a wonderful man, died much too young. But he had never done music for a soundtrack like this. […] He didn’t write it scene-by-scene and try to have it fit, according to what was going on. He just knew roughly what the scenes were going to be. And he wrote the jazz score. And somehow, again, all the little things that could have gone wrong just seemed to go right. And of course that wonderful song “Linus and Lucy” has become a minor classic now.

Charles Schulz died in February 2000, the night before his final comic strip ran in the Sunday paper. The rights to the animated specials were purchased by Apple TV in 2020. A Charlie Brown Christmas can be streamed for free Dec. 13 and 14.