[7.5/10] It’s funny how far away and yet how close these specials from so far in the past seem. It speaks to a certain universality of the human condition. As much as this special looks and sounds like a product of the 1960s, ideas like not feeling like you think you’re supposed to at the holidays or fretting about the overcommercialization of the season are still very much with us fifty-five years later. It speaks to the way that Charles Schultz really touched on something real when he came up with his sad sack, pushy, and loony characters who have made such an impression on generations of kids.

*A Charlie Brown Christmas* is more a cul-de-sac than a full-blown story, but it has a solid emotional throughline in Charlie feeling let down by the holiday, and trying to celebrate it in a way that will leave him fulfilled by the team New Years has come and left. That means plenty of time for Snoopy’s amusing impersonations and cartoony antics, and chances for Lucy to rattle off phobias and threaten to beat people up. But it also means the special can spend time just watching the kids be kids, enjoying their silly interactions that carry Schultz’s well-observed, sardonic sense of humor.

Despite the unhurried pace of the special, it makes the Peanuts Gang enjoyable to just hang out with as they strain to put on a play, throw snowballs, or grouse about and eventually rescue the last real life Xmas tree in town. Therein lies the message -- that Xmas has become about aluminum trees and lights displays and other things that depart from the spirit of the season. *A Charlie Brown Christmas* gets a little more explicitly religious than I might like, but the theme of escaping from the corporatization of the holiday (one that goes back as far as 1947’s *A Miracle on 34th Street*) is still a resonant one all these years later.

It’s particularly impressive how direct Schutlz and company are about channeling that through Charlie Brown. You feel for the poor kid, and his sense of the holiday blues is relatable, even and maybe especially through the eyes of an elementary school student. His tale of trying to find the real meaning of the holiday in all this season, and being invigorated and gratified by Linus and his otherwise skeptical chums is a really warm note to end on.

Of course, plenty has already been written about Vincent Guaraldi’s unimpeachable score, which has rightly ascended into yuletide legend for its loose, jazzy feel that manages to neatly balance the merry and melancholy. The designs and animation are a treat here as well, with the opening skating sequence a wonderful demonstration of movement, and the scrappy character looks adding charm to the presentation.

Overall, this one is a classic for a reason. It may be a little too slow and quiet for younger viewers these days, but it’s a surprisingly mature and, decades later, still trenchant look at the holiday season.

This is about the real meaning of Christmas...and the few haters of it are the pretentious that really don't like Christmas movies and are prejudiced against religion.

If you get beyond that, it's a heart-warming story with a lot of little sub stories to keep kids and adults with ADHD focused on the screen.

Really though, it's something to be cherished, respected, and loved.

Another one of those classic old children’s Christmas shows I first watched who knows when, but probably when it first came out, and then saw a couple dozen more times sinCe then.

When dealing with a show I loved as a kid, I refuse to try to separate the adult viewer and rate it more harshly. The memory and the childish feelings I had for it are wrapped up in its value for me. For example, I am an atheist, so the nativity story doesn’t carry a religious message for me, but I can appreciate its function in the story, and I read a lot of other fictional origin stories without being cynical.

It is funny that my mind connects the jazz theme with Christmas, when it is, well, jazz. Also an oddity that Bill Melendez was the producer, director and voice (such as it was) for Snoopy. They used children for a lot of the voices, rather than adults simulating child voices.

It would be interesting to learn how children nowadays respond to seeing this old show for the first time, after being exposed to many other modern shows and animation techniques, video games, etc.