"If we don't do it, who else can?" The Courage of Charles Schulz

As this year comes to a close I had wanted to write a holiday blog post about one of my favorite Christmas specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas. I have been busy working on The Web and scheduling book signings left and right, and my blog has been neglected indeed. I planned on writing this post before today, however things got delayed when I suffered an injury wrapping Christmas presents.

Information for this blog post was gathered from
"A Charlie Brown Christmas: The Making of a Tradition"
by Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez

What? You might ask. How can you injure yourself wrapping presents? Well, believe me, you can if your back is forty-something years old and you are doing a lot of leaning over as you cut, tape and furiously wrap each gift, and then you turn and bend at the waist to reach the next present. You can suffer a painful spasm that wreaks havoc on your entire lower back and sends you to the urgent care for muscle relaxers, steroids and painkillers.

It happens. And it happened to me.

That was a few days ago but now I am much better and since it’s still before Christmas, I will proceed with the blog post that explains why we all need a little bit of Charles Schulz’ courage inside of us.



In 1965 Charles Schulz was notified that Coca-Cola was interested in sponsoring a thirty minute Christmas special featuring his Peanuts characters, and that he needed to come up with the outline for a script in five days. Schulz calmly rose to the challenge. He shared with his producer, Lee Mendelson, his ideas, saying, “If it’s to be a Christmas special, I certainly want to deal with the true meaning of Christmas.” His outline was sent to Coca Cola, who bought it and gave him six months to produce his special—a very short time considering the task at hand. But Charles Schulz – or Sparky, as his friends called him – rolled up his sleeves and got to work, and did not back down when a few of his ideas were challenged because they went against the popular opinion of the times.

Number One: Sparky refused to use laugh tracks (dubbed in laughter to signal to the audience when a joke was told). Shows like The Flinstones and The Jetsons had built in laugh tracks, but when Mendelson suggested using one to Sparky he said, “Absolutely not.” And that was the end of that.

Number Two: Charles Schulz insisted on using children to voice the parts, instead of using adult actors pretending to be kids. Some of the children who were cast were even too young to read and had to have their lines fed to them. I found that seven-year-old Christopher Shea was the young actor cast to voice Linus, and this is where my research into this blog post took a bit of a turn.

I could not escape the fact that the picture of Christopher Shea had an uncanny resemblance to the boy from "The Poseidon Adventure" (one of several disaster movies of the 1970’s that made me never want to set foot onto a cruise ship). So I stopped my research and performed a few Google searches to satisfy my nagging curiosity. As it turns out the actor who was the voice of Linus is the older brother to Eric Shea, the actor who followed Gene Hackman to safety aboard the overturned Poseidon ship. Consider this your random fact of the day. :)

Number Three: Charles Schulz, who was a strong Christian, wanted his cartoon to include the true meaning of Christmas, which meant adding a religious component to the show. His main animator, Bill Melendez, was not so sure. When he first looked at that part of the story he told Sparky, “We can’t do this, it’s too religious.”

To which Sparky replied, “Bill, if we don’t do it, who else can? We’re the only ones who can do it.” They finished the special which included Linus’ now-famous reading of the King James version of Luke 2: 8-14 then took off for New York to present it to CBS’ top executives.

Producer Lee Mendelson was apprehensive. Many of the animators had shared their opinions that something seemed a little off. Indeed, this was the first Peanuts animated special, and they were using jazz music, no laugh tracks, children's voices and a Bible verse inserted into a cartoon when cartoons were supposed to be funny. The top two CBS executives watched the special, and when it was over they turned to Mendelson.

“Well, you gave it a good shot,” said one executive.

“It seems a little flat … a little slow,” said the other.

However, despite their misgivings CBS still aired the show and incredibly 15 million households tuned in to watch. A Charlie Brown Christmas came in second in ratings (losing out to Bonanza) and later won an Emmy and spurred several more Peanuts specials.

So why do I say we all need a little bit of Charles Schulz’ courage inside of us? When I learned of how Charles Schulz had the courage to stick to his vision of keeping religion in his Christmas special, despite some doubters around him, it reminded me of what would happen three years later when he had the courage to add an African American character to the Peanuts gang, despite people around him worrying it could kill his comic strip. see my blog post

"If we don't do it, who else can?"

Both times Schulz did what he felt was right, and both times the nay-sayers were wrong and Good Ole Charlie Brown thrived. We need a bit of Sparky's courage because we live in times where it can be intimidating to voice an opinion or stick to a vision. There will always be people who may disagree or have doubts (or troll you on Twitter) but if you believe in your vision, don’t be afraid to let it shine. The world may be a better place because of it.

Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving, Charlie Brown and Racism? Part One

 I’ve had a hard time getting into the holiday season this year. A combination of the recent terrorist attacks and the usual stress that comes with the holidays has made me feel kind of down. So the other day, when I confessed to my son how I’d been feeling, he suggested watching some Peanuts cartoons featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown. We watched “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” and I couldn’t help but wonder if the holidays would be simpler if we chose to serve the meal Charlie Brown style – toast, pretzels, jelly beans and ice cream sundaes. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind. 

Leave it to Linus to give the Thanksgiving prayer, and I was struck at how refreshing his simple prayer was, telling a little about the first Thanksgiving where the pilgrims thanked God for the opportunity to create a new world with freedom and justice. Are there many shows these days that reflect such a positive message about America? I thought in honor of Thanksgiving, I’d post a clip from the cartoon on my blog, so I searched Youtube.

That’s when this blog post took a turn in a different direction.

I found the clip I wanted, and the first comment posted in the comments section was something to the effect of how Peanuts was racist, because Franklin (the first African-American Peanuts character) is sitting by himself across the table from the rest of the Peanuts gang.

Really? I watched and re-watched the clip, and sure enough, Franklin was sitting by himself. But was it meant to be racist? It’s interesting how I watched the clip seeing a positive message about America, where someone else watched the same clip and saw racism.

And I’ve got to wonder. How does that happen?

A friend of mine once said, “You’re born with skin color, but race is taught.” Boy, is that ever a true statement. If there’s one thing that being a parent has shown me firsthand, it’s that our children don’t see race. We might send them off to preschool and they might ask about someone that looks different from them, but they’re not seeing race, at least not until someone tells them to see it.

But back to poor Franklin, sitting by himself at Charlie Brown’s impromptu Thanksgiving Dinner. I was curious so I did some Googling about how his character came about, and discovered a story that gave me perspective, and inspiration, and made me proud of how far our society has come. Hopefully, you'll feel that way, too.  Click here for Part 2.

Click here  for Part 2 of this Thanksgiving blog post.