A Charlie Brown Christmas

I got home from work and a pathetic attempt at Christmas shopping (I got a hat and some mittens for a 4-year old girl whose name I pulled off the "Angel Tree" at work; why the hell is it suddenly so difficult to buy Barbie clothes?*) just in time to catch "A Charlie Brown Christmas" on TV. The show is oooooold, and quite dated - having Lucy post a sign at her Psychiatry booth that says "The Doctor Is REAL IN" might have been funny and even edgy and current once upon a time, but now it just looks dated. Still, it's fun if for nothing other than to watch Snoopy ridicule Charlie Brown, do impressions of a sheep, a cow, and a penguin, perch like a vulture on Lucy's head, dance on Schroeder's piano, turn red with embarassment, and then slink off on his belly. Also the hand-waving decoration and transformation of a sickly twig into a full-fledged Christmas tree is pretty funny, and somewhat goes against the moral of the story (Snoopy's Christmas decorations, which represented his selling-out to commercialism, are the very decorations that transform the Christmas tree - so, see, all it took was a little commercialism to change that poor little twig into a great tree!)

It was only at the end when I saw the copyright line that I realized just how old this show is: 40 years. 40 years! For forty years this show has been airing, and it got barely a shout from the network. A rerun of "Lost" gets more publicity.

Once upon a time my brother and sister and I would drop everything just to see this, or "Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town" (which was on the other night) or "The Year Without A Santa Claus" (also known as "The Heat Miser / Cold Miser show", which also aired in the last few nights), "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" (the 1964 animation classic, not the dreadful 1998 cartoon), and "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" (the 1966 classic, not the Jim Carrey crapfest). Nowadays the shows still air, thanks in part to the demands of nostalgic but increasingly irrelevant Generation X-ers (whose voices are being drowned out by the increasing economic power of Generation Y and the continuing presence of the aging Baby Boomers.) But in this era of TIVO and video on demand and nearly every program ever made being available on DVD, does anyone really feel the need to watch these things when they are broadcast on TV? The notion of letting some network programmer determine what time you will drop everything and sit down and stare into your TV for a half-hour seems not just anachronistic but downright tyrannical.** I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

*Don't worry, I did get a Barbie. TWO Barbies. And a life-sized baby doll. It's just the big flat packs of clothes and shoes that I can't find. I believe in spoiling total strangers.

**Jess Nevins explores this a bit further here.