Is It Time to Retire A Charlie Brown Christmas?

Christmas, if you celebrate it, means tradition. Some families give gifts on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day (Crash Davis does not approve of this, BTW), some sing carols — although speaking personally, no house I have lived in since the 1970s has ever been visited by carolers — and some watch their favorite holiday-themed TV shows.

Among holidays, Christmas is far and away the leader in TV specials, both in quantity (Lifetime seems to churn a new dozen every year) and venerability, which brings me to A Charlie Brown Christmas. The show has aired at least once (often more) a December since its debut in 1965, making it older than me and almost all of my friends.

It’s been a good run, but at the risk of Scrooging things up, let me suggest it might be time to put Snoopy and the gang out to pasture.

For starters, there’s the message. ACBC follows our hero, perpetual underdog Charlie Brown as he becomes increasingly dismayed/outraged by the rampant commercialism surrounding Christmas: cash prizes for best house decorating? His baby sister requesting cash from Santa? AN ALUMINUM TREE? All very distressing, to be sure.

And all old hat, unfortunately. If Charles Schultz’s cautionary tale about runaway materialism was supposed to somehow rein in the country’s annual display of greed, I’m afraid it has failed in a way that can only be described as “utterly.”

Continue reading “Is It Time to Retire A Charlie Brown Christmas?” >