Schulz insisted on one core purpose: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” had to be about something. Namely, the true meaning of Christmas. Otherwise, Schulz said, “Why bother doing it?”

The program will air again on ABC on Thursday, December 16. Last Sunday The Washington Post carried a lengthy feature article about the making of this animated classic.

I was fascinated to find out that a documentary filmmaker was at the bottom of it all, producer-director Lee Mendelson. He and “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz worked with animator Bill Melendez to create this television special.

According to the Post, “Charles Schulz was long viewed as a man plagued by anxiety, self-doubt and fear of rejection. Yet when it came to the production of ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ Mendelson says, Schulz was the epitome of confidence and assured cool.” He was also the one to hold the line about the show’s focus, according to the newspaper.

Schulz insisted on one core purpose: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” had to be about something. Namely, the true meaning of Christmas. Otherwise, Schulz said, “Why bother doing it?”

Mendelson and Melendez asked Schulz whether he was sure he wanted to include biblical text in the special. The cartoonist’s response, Mendelson recalls: “If we don’t do it, who will?”

To Coca-Cola’s credit, Mendelson says, the corporate sponsor never balked at the idea of including New Testament passages. The result — Linus’s reading from the Book of Luke about the meaning of the season — became “the most magical two minutes in all of TV animation,” the producer says.

In writing about the “Peanuts” special in “Manhood for Amateurs,” [author Michael] Chabon — a self-described Jewish “liberal agnostic empiricist” — waxed: “I still know that chapter and verse of the Gospel of Luke by heart, and no amount of subsequent disillusionment with the behavior of self-described Christians, or with the ongoing progressive commercialization that in 1965 had already broken Charlie Brown’s heart, has robbed the central miracle of Christianity of its power to move me the way any truly great story can.”

Mendelson also credits part of the power of the scene to child voice actor Christopher Shea, whose tone of wise innocence, the producer says, fits the moment perfectly.

Below is a link to a clip from the show with the famous Linus recitation. Note how when he gets to the verse about “fear not,” he drops his beloved security blanket. A wonderful example for us all this holiday season! (Other excerpts are available on YouTube.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKk9rv2hUfA&feature=player_embedded#!

For additional perspectives on this program, here are two blog posts I’ve written about in the past: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (comments on the podcast show) and “Lessons from A Charlie Brown Christmas (the early influence of radical feminism).” [Editor’s note: The original URLs (links) referenced here are no longer valid, so the links have been removed.]

Carolyn McCulley is the founder of a documentary company, Citygate Films. She studied at the City of London Polytechnic (England) and received her B.S. in journalism from the University of Maryland. Her blog is “Radical Womanhood”

http://solofemininity.blogs.com/

. This article is from that blog and is used with her permission.