Charlie Brown’s Inside Job

Another reason A Charlie Brown Christmas has staying power is because it’s cool. That’s because in 1963 the producer, Lee Mendelson, had an experience that many people had that year. He was listening to the radio when a song came on that wasn’t like any other. It was the B side of a single from a jazz album called Impressions of Black Orpheus. The song was “Cast Your Fate to the Wind,” by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and if you’ve never heard it, you should play it right now. It’s a song that comes over you in a powerful way, somehow expressing the way that melancholy and happiness can combine into an intense emotion. Mendelson heard it on the radio and thought it would be perfect for a documentary he was then making about Schulz, whose work had a mid-century sophistication. The documentary never aired, but when the animated special came around he decided—what the hell?—to use the same music. That was the genius decision, the force that keeps the show from being dated.

Schulz had a complicated relationship with Christianity. He had grown up with a casual, midwestern Lutheranism, but during the Second World War, he became a strong believer. When he came home to St. Paul, Minnesota, he converted to the fundamentalist Church of God, and for a while he preached on street corners. All the suits had said no to the religious element in the special, but Schulz insisted. Everyone at the network was prepared for a flop, but Schulz wasn’t thinking of network executives when he made the special. He was thinking about children and about the nature of God. The suits didn’t understand it, but from the first broadcast, the kids who watched it loved it, and made it a huge hit from then on.

The special turns on what could have been the most banal plot in the world: A character who is disgusted with the commercialization of Christmas tries to uncover the meaning of the holiday, looks in all the wrong places, and finally learns the truth. Try to find something new in that one. Charlie Brown has looked for Christmas, unsuccessfully, in the lot full of aluminum Christmas trees; in the letter to Santa that his little sister, Sally, has him write (“Please note the size and color of each item and send as many as possible. If it seems too complicated make it easy on yourself: just send money.”); and in the elaborate decorations Snoopy has put on his doghouse (“My own dog, gone commercial!”).

Read: The paradox of ‘Peanuts’

Standing in the wings of the school auditorium, where he has the impossible task of directing his friends in a Nativity play, Charlie Brown cries out in anguish: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

And then, in his calm, reassuring voice, Linus says, “Sure, Charlie Brown. I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” And he walks to the middle of the stage and begins. You never know if Linus believes the words he recites, or if they were just so many lines to be memorized—and that’s Linus all over.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding

in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them,

and the glory of the Lord shone round about them:

and they were sore afraid

From the minute Linus starts talking, I feel like I’m holding my breath. It feels as though I’m being called back to something, as though finally I’ve been reunited with something elemental.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people

It’s ridiculous, it’s television—corporate America, Coca-Cola. But:“Fear not.” On that empty stage, in that small boy’s voice, it has a spellbinding power over me.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

This is 17th-century prose describing something that supposedly took place 1,500 years earlier. So why does it feel like news from the front?

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Caitlin Flanagan is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Girl Land and To Hell With All That.