There’s something so nostalgic and iconic about Vince Guaraldi Trio’s soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas. Christmas classics reimagined inside the jazz genre somehow feel eternal to our hearts and ears. Of course, it also helps that A Charlie Brown Christmas is such a beloved Christmas movie. But what makes it so easy to love? Is it the dulcet piano playing? Is it Charlie Brown’s sad little Christmas tree? Is it Linus’s iconic description of the Christmas story?
The movie begins with Charlie Brown lamenting that he doesn’t feel the joy he’s supposed to during Christmas time. His reason? He just doesn’t feel like he understands it.
Lucy tries to identify with Charlie Brown by saying she feels sad that she never gets what she wants, which is “real estate.” As the story continues, we realize that Charlie Brown won’t find much help in understanding Christmas from his other friends, either. Snoopy is convinced it’s about commercial success and making money. His little sister, Sally, thinks about getting the most presents or the most cash, ideally “tens and twenties.”
Charlie Brown turns to directing a Christmas play to fix his holiday funk, but he can’t escape his problems. He continues to lament that Christmas isn’t quite what it’s supposed to be. Lucy tells him bluntly: “We all know Christmas is a big commercial racket.”
Growing increasingly disillusioned, Charlie Brown wonders if buying a Christmas tree will fix things. Yet, every Christmas tree he finds is fake and overly bright and colorful. The only real Christmas tree Charlie Brown can find is sad and small.
Maybe you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, dang, I didn’t remember the movie being so cynical. Our fond memories of Charlie Brown’s genuinely awful day of attempting to fix his Christmas blues may have been tinted by nostalgia-colored glasses.
But it’s what makes Linus’s reading of the Gospel of Luke so memorable and powerful. “Linus is right, I won’t let all the commercialism ruin my Christmas” concludes Charlie Brown after Linus lays out the Christmas story. It was a statement in 1965, and it’s a statement today.
Conversation Starter: Do all the sales and advertisements and shopping trips during Christmas bother you? Why or why not?