I confess: I’m a curmudgeon.
The pretty colors of wintertime are comforting, and I spend hours getting my tree just right.
Still, I divorce those conventions from their context.
Custom image by Zanda Rice
I’m even anxious, my frustration turning palpable.
For me,Christmas has become too blatantly aggressive a requirement to be a chipper and capitalist kaiju monster.
The next time I leave my house, a bunch ofDickensian Muppetsshould guilt-trip me via song.
Image via CBS
Every year, one holiday movie tradition slices through this dreary atmosphere.
The character interactions crackle.
The snarky, irreverent dialogue sparkles like fresh snow in the sunlight.
Image via CBS
The animation timing is spot-on, the expressions hilarious and evocative just by adjusting a few line placements.
And such spirited comedy could easily coast along without needing a cuttingly insightful heart.
What Themes Does ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ Address?
His friends happily ice skate as the snow falls in individual white dots.
Charlie Brown forges down a street in restless silence.
When he finally pauses at a small brick wall, it’s meaningful.
Image via CBS
“Christmas is coming, but Im not happy.I dont feel the way Im supposed to feel.”
I always end up feeling depressed."
A Charlie Brown Christmasruns for 26 minutes with credits.
Schulz had no time to spare, buthe didn’t need to call me out so quickly.
I remember when I’d chuckle sympathetically at Charlie Brown’s confused musing.
Now, I nod in solidarity; it’s a mood.
This year especially, I feel kicked in the teeth all the way into my sinuses.
Frankly, the answers seem endless.
The search for Hallmark’s next Christmas star has gone alongside the search for my holiday spirit.
Beneath those emotional truths exists another fact.
Not all of us always miss the football.
When it comes to the Christmas blues, however,we can be and have been Charlie Brown.
Then that adorably sad little Christmas tree dooms me.
Everyone except Charlie Brown disdains the feeble sapling.
Charlie Brown knows it “need[s] a home,” and he provides.
I’m not crying, it’s just an ocean on my face.
Even when his friends cruelly mock him and the tree, Charlie Brown still believes in its potential.
He starts to decorate.
Its top sinks to the ground under the weight of one ornament.
I know that feeling.
Charlie abandons the tree, believing he ruins everything he touches.
I know that feeling, too.
Perpetually exhausted, dismayed at everything going wrong externally and emotionally, Charlie Brown shouts into the ether.
Can anyone in earshot tell him the “true meaning of Christmas?
Linus recites Bible verses without preaching a religious agenda.
Christmas isn’t about consumerism.
Christmas doesn’t even need to be about religion.
We’re supposed to care for others instead of platituding through performative traditions.
That’s Christmas magic I can believe in.
When CBS executives first watchedA Charlie Brown Christmas, they wrote off the oddball, risky venture as doomed.
“They said it was too slow.
They didn’t like the kids' voices.
[…] We didn’t think it would ever air again.”
