How ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ Became an Unexpected Classic

When “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired on December 9, 1965, TV executives—and even some of the show’s creators—were convinced it was going to flop.

"Peanuts," the comic strip created by Charles Schulz, was incredibly popular. (It had just graced the cover of Time magazine). Featuring beloved characters such as the hapless Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy, the franchise set especially high expectations for the TV special.

But Charlie Brown’s animated debut was unlike anything seen on television at the time.  

The special broke several cartoon conventions of the era. It hired actual kids as voice actors, featured a spare jazz soundtrack and did not include a laugh track. Most controversial of all, it was a children's Christmas special featuring a lengthy quote from the Bible.

A week before its airdate, CBS held a test screening of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for executives.  

“The general reaction was one of disappointment,” said former CBS executive Fred Silverman in the documentary The Making of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (2015). “There were specific negative comments about the music, the piano music, some of the voicing, which sounded kind of amateurish.” 

Even the special’s lead producer and co-creator, Lee Mendelson, feared that it would not only bomb, but possibly take down "Peanuts" with it. Instead, more than 15 million American households tuned in for its premiere—half of all TV viewers at the time. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” went on to win awards and become a beloved holiday classic.  

Coca-Cola played an indirect role in creating the first "Peanuts" TV special. Executives at the soda company’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, had seen clips from an unreleased documentary Mendelson made about Schulz. The agency contacted Mendelson with news that Coca-Cola was looking to commission a 25-minute animated Christmas "Peanuts" special. Excitedly, he informed Schulz they’d sold “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” 

“Schulz said, ‘What’s that?’” recalled Mendelson. “And I said, ‘It’s something you’re going to write tomorrow.’” 

The cartoonist quickly came up with a story centered around the chaos of the "Peanuts" gang trying to stage a Christmas play. Mendelson had recently read The Fir Tree by Hans Christian Andersen and pitched the idea of Charlie Brown’s sad, spindly Christmas tree. They hired artist Bill Melendez, who had animated two minutes of "Peanuts" footage for Mendelson's documentary, to bring the "Peanuts" characters to life.

They also brought on jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, whose score would become one of the most memorable elements of the special. Today, the soundtrack to “A Charlie Brown Christmas”—featuring tracks like “Linus and Lucy”—is one of the best-selling Christmas albums of all time. But back in 1965, instrumental jazz was seen as a strange choice for a kids' cartoon.  

Mendelson, who lived in San Francisco, had heard a song on the radio called “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” by Guaraldi. “Something in my mind said, ‘That's the kind of music that I'm looking for,’” Mendelson said, “It's adult-like, but also child-like. It seemed to fit our characters.” 

Late in the production, the team decided to put lyrics to Guaraldi’s opening song. Mendelson sat down and wrote the words to “Christmas Time is Here” in 10 minutes on the back of an envelope. Guaraldi enlisted a children’s choir from St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Rafael, California, to sing the song, now a wistful holiday classic.

In 2007, Vince Guaraldi’s multi-platinum soundtrack was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

CBS executives were anxious about airing “A Charlie Brown Christmas" for several reasons.  

For one, Schulz insisted on using real children to voice the characters instead of adult actors. Some were actors—like 8-year-old Peter Robbins who voiced Charlie Brown—but others were just kids from Mendelson’s neighborhood in Northern California. The youngest voice actor, Kathy Steinberg, was only six when she recorded the voice of Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister.  

True to his comic strip, Schulz also wrote complicated dialogue for the characters. At one point, Lucy calls Christmas “a big commercial racket...run by a big Eastern syndicate.” Although "Peanuts" characters in the comic strip had always wrestled with adult ideas, executives worried viewers would be lost.  

The biggest concern for both CBS executives and Mendelson himself was Schulz’s insistence on having the character of Linus recite a passage from the New Testament about the birth of Jesus. At the time, fewer than 10 percent of Christmas-themed TV shows contained a direct reference to religion, explains scholar Stephen J. Lind.  

“We looked at each other and said, ‘Well, there goes our careers right down the drain,’” Mendelson recalled. When CBS executives saw the scene, they said, “The Bible thing scares us.”  

But Schulz, a religious man who taught Sunday school, believed it was important to address the real meaning of Christmas. “If we don’t do it, who will?” Schulz asked.  

As it turned out, everything that made "A Charlie Brown Christmas" so unconventional—its slow pacing, its plain animation, its unsophisticated voice acting and its sentimental message—was what resonated most with both viewers and critics. 

In 1966, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” won both an Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Program and a Peabody Award.