It's hard to imagine a holiday season without A Charlie Brown Christmas. The 1965 broadcast has become a staple-etched into traditions across generations like decorating the tree or sipping hot cocoa.
This beloved TV special almost didn’t make it to air. CBS executives thought the 25-minute program was too slow, too serious and too different from the upbeat spectacles they imagined audiences wanted.
The program turned Peanuts from a popular comic strip into a multimedia empire-not because it was flashy or followed the rules, but because it was sincere.
Mendelson, Schulz, and animator Bill Melendez worked fast to piece together a storyline. The cartoonist wanted to tell a story that cut through the glitz of holiday commercialism and brought the focus back to something deeper.
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