084: Charlie Brown's Other Christmas Specials

Christmas is upon us, and loyal readers of this blog know that means it’s time for festive blog posts suited to the Merriest of Seasons! I’ve got three for you this year. I already put out a look at the second For Better or For Worse Christmas special. (With commercials!) While that was fun, it was really just a bonus. Now we get into the meat of the content. Lately I’ve been on a kick of watching Christmas specials and talking about them here, so naturally I decided to continue that.

Snoopy is cute. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Last year I did a massive two-part post covering six Christmas specials based on comic strip properties. One of those was the famous A Charlie Brown Christmas. Surprisingly, I ended up ranking it number three on my list, which is something I hadn’t expected going into it. As I was researching that post I learned something I hadn’t known before. Peanuts actually had three more Christmas specials!

Sally is excited. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

As a little background, I have been a lifetime Peanuts fan. This started when I was very young, as my mom used to buy me paperback collections of the comic strips at garage sales. (I still have them in a box in my storage room.) When I started reading the daily funny pages, Peanuts was one of many I would read. I had copies of the feature-length movies A Boy Named Charlie Brown and Snoopy Come Home that had been taped off of television. I watched those over and over growing up. (Snoopy was my favorite. I still have my worn-out Snoopy stuffed animal.)

As I got older, and after the strip ended, I fell off from the property. I still had fond memories of the characters and the world they populated, but I had no urge to revisit it. Until, that is, I met Cocoashade and on one of our dates, I took her to see The Peanuts Movie in the theater. Full of happy nostalgia, I soon started rereading every strip, starting with the first one. (I’m only up to May 1960 now… I keep forgetting I’m reading it and GoComics is kinda crap now.)

Festive! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Anyway, all of that is to say, although I only ranked it three on my Christmas special list, I do love Peanuts, the characters, and the comic strip. I’ve done my best to separate nostalgia and fondness from these critiques, and to look at them based on how they compare to the first and most beloved special that preceded them. I will also be ranking them based on how well I feel they reflect the spirit of Christmas.

So with all that said, let us get to the specials, in order of release.

Title card. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown first aired on CBS in 1992. This is the first Christmas special featuring Peanuts characters since the classic in 1965. I couldn’t find much about this one in my research, besides the fact that it was the last special released for CBS. This one is made up of shorts taken from the comic strip, and unlike the original Christmas special, it doesn’t try to tell a coherent story.

Oop. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The special starts with Linus and Sally on top of a hill in a cardboard box. I'm not sure why they don't have a sled. Sally wimps out and Linus falls face first.

This show has great freeze frame moments. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

After she leaves, he tries again but goes backwards this time. His third try works, but he crashes and Lucy mistakes the box for an ornament.

He looks so hopeful. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The next scene is Charlie Brown trying to sell Christmas wreaths. I got a little chuckle out of this exchange:

Violet: "It's not even Thanksgiving yet. By the time Christmas comes, all the needles will be falling off."

Charlie Brown: "Don't hang it near the turkey."

No one will buy from him. Franklin says he's adding to the over-commercialism of Christmas, but Charlie Brown points out that he isn't because he hasn't sold one yet.

Sally is on the case. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

After more failures, Sally joins in and starts lying to people that they're biblical wreaths, which is weird. She goes off with Snoopy and hangs a wreath from his nose to "show off the product". It was a very strange way to end this segment. It sort of fizzled.

After this we finally get the opening credits, 4 minutes in. Linus walks by a snowman, looking at it suspiciously and after he’s gone the hat lifts up to show Woodstock is sitting there. Very random, but kind of cute.

I guess this is about homework now? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The next story is Peppermint Patty trying to get out of her homework. She's supposed to read a book over Christmas break but instead watches a Tale of Two Cities on TV. She thinks the commercials are part of it, so wonders what shampoo, soap and coffee have to do with the plot. She also procrastinates by building a snowman. (Wearing her sandals in the snow.) “If I don’t do it, no one else will, and he has a right to exist,“ she declares.

Then, for some reason, her and Marcie go to a concert and we see Patty in school writing about it. I guess they ran out of Christmas stuff here?

HONK. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The next story shows Snoopy as a bell-ringing charity Santa. Lucy complains about all the bells. After Violet asks if he can do anything else, Snoopy toots a horn, scaring Linus and annoying Lucy. It's actually pretty cute seeing Snoopy in his costume.

This was amusing. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Sally asks where all his helpers are, and three birds walk by with signs that say "help". This got a genuine laugh out of me both times I watched it.

This is followed by a brief part where Linus finds a bird orchestra under the snowman’s hat. This was really weird and not connected to anything aside from the opening credit scene, so I have to assume it was a commercial bumper. (Even though there were no other bumpers.)

I like how startled he looks. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The next story is Sally writing an essay on the true meaning of Christmas, which in her eyes is receiving presents. Charlie Brown tries to explain that it's actually about giving, but she doesn't get it. Sally then makes her Christmas list and letter to Santa. Charlie Brown convinces her Santa’s wife's name is Mary Christmas. That whole part was a bit odd and felt somewhat pointless. But Mary Christmas is a solid pun, so I’ve gotta give it that.

Dancey dance. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Snoopy grabs a candy cane and swings it around like a musical prop cane. This seemed to go nowhere either, but then Sally runs in, saying all the candy canes are gone. Charlie Brown suggests she look outside and Snoopy and three of his bird minions are using them to perform a dance number.

Oh, they fit the bible into this. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Next, Sally asks Linus about what Christmas is all about. Of course he reads from the Bible, but like me and many other viewers, she tunes him out and complains about what she doesn't get about Christmas. This part was pretty boring.

Everyone else looks very chill. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

In the next segment, we actually get what feels like a real story. Charlie Brown wants to buy gloves for Peggy Jean but doesn't have enough money. I didn't remember her at all, but some quick research turned up she was a character for a bit near the end of the comic strip and was Charlie Brown's girlfriend from summer camp. Lucy suggests he sell Snoopy, but he probably wouldn't be worth much.

Did he make his own stand or is he using Lucy’s? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Charlie Brown tries to sell an autographed baseball and then manages to sell his entire comic book collection.

No, this isn’t the Little Red-Haired Girl. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

But after all that, when he goes to buy the gloves, he runs into Peggy Jean at the store and she shows off the new gloves she just bought, which were the same ones he was going to get. As an endcap we see he bought them anyway and gave them to Snoopy.

BAH. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

The last story is about the school Christmas play. Peppermint Patty wants to play Mary, but the role went to Marcie. Patty ended up as a sheep and was worried she would forget her line. (Which is "bahhh".) Sally ended up as an angel and she's excited. While Charlie Brown messes around with his hockey stick, she practices her line. "Hark." She adds, "And then Harold Angel sings." This is a running gag, but she says it's right there in the script.

Hehehe. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

They go to the church to see the play and instead of "bahhh" Peppermint Patty says "Woof, meow, whatever." Sally also forgets her one word line and instead says "hockey stick", probably because she associated the line with her brother's hockey stick? Back at home she's freaking out and Charlie Brown (talking to someone unspecified on the phone) says after she flubbed her line, he just left but can you believe she thought someone named Harold Angel would sing?. The doorbell rings and a kid is standing there asking for Sally who says his name is Harold Angel. Which was actually a pretty good payoff for the running joke.

At the very end Lucy is being crabby and Linus reminds her that when they were opening presents she said they should be nice to everyone all year round. She storms off, he says "Joy to the world", and the special ends here.

Cue laughter. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Thoughts: I had fun watching this, but format-wise, it was all over the place. It had no cohesion. It was just rapid-fire comic gags that didn’t really fit together, except for the loose theme of Christmas. (Although some of it took place before Thanksgiving, and the concert and school assignment stuff really had nothing to do with anything.) So there was a lot of padding here. I could see a far better version of this… this special excelled in the slightly longer vignettes— the quest to buy gloves, the Christmas play. Why didn’t they use those stories as the framing pieces, spreading them out with the unconnected scenes in between? That way it would feel like there was an actual plot unfolding. (Charlie Brown trying to sell wreaths could have been him getting a jump on earning Christmas money.) If they’d thought to do it this way, it would have felt like a full story with extra padding, instead of a messy jumble.

But hey, it wasn’t all bad. I got a couple of chuckles out of it and like Peanuts always does, it transported me briefly back to my childhood. There were some solid ideas and character moments. The Snoopy parts were good, the high points of the special. Snoopy Claus was cute. I liked Peppermint Patty as a bored-looking sheep, and the Harold Angel part was actually unexpected. I didn’t see that twist coming. The animation was fairly smooth and the art was crisp. I’ve seen poorer-quality screenshots, so I suspect like the original special, this one was remastered for streaming.

As cute as it was, I can see why this special didn’t catch on like the original one did. It was missing the earnestness and heart of the original, but it did have its own charm and it’s worth a watch for fans. With a little more effort, a little more cohesion, it could have been really good. For the prevalent Christmas imagery and even after deducting points for the non-Christmas filler, I still rank this on the top slot as number 1 on the list. Out of all of these, it most encapsulates the experience of Christmas for a kid. It stacks up surprisingly well with the original special as it was clearly intended to be about the holiday and the various trappings. If they had just restructured it to tell a story or two, it would have felt like an actual special rather than a mass of disjointed scenes.

Title card. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales originally aired on ABC in 2002. This one is a bit of an oddity, as it is only around 17 minutes long. There is a reason for this. See, the original Charlie Brown Christmas was designed to fit into a 30 minute timeslot. With commercials, it would stretch beyond that limit. When the show came to ABC, they made edits to cut it to a half an hour, but fans weren’t happy with this. As a solution, ABC aired a short retrospective to stretch it to an hour. This short was created to fill that extra airspace. As such, it has no real plot and is made up of short stories and jokes from the Peanuts strip.

Snoopy’s whirlwind attack. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

The special is divided into segments for some of the characters. The first one is about Snoopy. Lucy is going to be in a skating show and needs a partner. Schroeder isn't interested because he's into hockey.

It’s super effective. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Snoopy wants to be her partner, so he shows off until he crashes into her.

Just a boy walking his Santa. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Snoopy then goes home, dresses as Santa Claus, and has Charlie Brown walk him to his bell-ringing job. (See previous special.)

Santa’s had enough. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Rerun goes to ask him questions. He wants to know what happened to all the presents he asked for last year. Snoopy yells at him and Rerun goes home, saying Santa was too busy to talk.

Snoopy pulls an accordian out of somewhere and Woodstock pops out of his donation chimney and whistles along with the song.

PANIC. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

We cut to Snoopy on his doghouse, covered in snow and being tormented by the unseen cat next door. Carlie Brown suggests he try showing Christmas cheer and the cat scratches a Christmas-tree-shaped hole in the side of his doghouse.

Linus is a thinker. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Next up is Linus's portion of the special. Linus writes a letter to Santa telling him that he's not just writing because he wants something. Lucy gets mad when he tells Santa to just skip their house and he tries two more drafts of the letter. Not much to say about this.

This part was weird. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

He goes to school and we get an odd sequence where a weird girl who sits next to him changes her name every day. She refuses to give him her address for a Christmas card and then gives him a fake address. Yeah, this was really pointless too, and barely connected to Christmas.

Sally’s happy now. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Then we get Sally's scenes. Sally thinks she needs to write to "Samantha Claus". There's really no continuity here, because I have no explanation for how she forgot who Santa was after the previous special. (Also she sounds younger.) Whatever. She gets mad because her brother didn't correct her and she got laughed at during school for getting the name wrong. But then Charlie Brown wraps her Christmas present and she's happy again.

In her next scene she draws bunnies as shepherds on her Christmas cards. Charlie Brown walks away without comment and she yells after him, "Don't say I'm not religious!"

The art style is strange in parts. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Linus, back on his Bible thing, tells Sally about the three wise men. Then she goes out to find a Christmas tree. She explains that she doesn't know how to chop it down, so she hopes it'll just fall down. She gets yelled at by a kid who doesn't have a name. (He's referred to in the production and by Sally as the "ugly kid".) She asks if it just falls down can she have it? He laughingly agrees and it falls down. She carries it off and he's angry. He comes to yell at her about it and she reminds him he said she could have it and it's a Christmas miracle. Besides, Snoopy already decorated it. Charlie Brown just looks confused and again walks off without a word. She eventually brings the tree back, but he decides she can keep it. Man, this segment went on and on and was very repetitive, ultimately going nowhere.

Did she nail them into the bricks or use tape? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

They decorate the tree again and Charlie Brown tells a story about how their grandmother used to get fruit in her stocking. Sally is excited but then sees how small her socks are. So she covers the fireplace in them.

PUNCH. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Next is Lucy's segment. She mainly yells at Linus, insults Charlie Brown, and pesters Schroeder. She dictates a letter for Linus to write and when he says she's not perfect, she punches him. She tells Linus he has to give her a present, it's in the Bible. He says it isn't, but she finds the word "sister" in there and says this proves it.

Behold, cookies. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

In Charlie Brown's section, he writes a Christmas card to the Little Red-haired Girl and accidentally signs it "Your Sweet Baboo" because Sally called Linus that while he was writing.

Sally thinks about leaving frozen broccoli out for Santa. She instead puts cookies under the tree and hides behind a chair. She sees Snoopy stealing the cookies, again dressed as Santa. She later wakes Charlie Brown up, asking what sugar plums are, because she saw them dancing in her head. What a clumsy attempt at a joke. She then wakes him up saying Santa left him nothing, then adds "April fools!"

Charlie Brown talks with Lucy on the phone and she asks if Snoopy enjoyed the sweater she made for him.

Aww. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

He does not.

Woodstock rides his new bike. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

The doll bike he ordered for Sally was delivered to Woodstock instead. The end.

This is why it’s important to have a Santa costume. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

Thoughts: The quality on this special was really poor, especially when compared to the one that preceded it. I don’t think it went through the remaster process like the other specials. The animation looked cheap, the characters appeared to be hastily-drawn. The voicework was subpar. All the characters were recast (except Snoopy and Woodstock) and they seem to have de-aged Sally. She seemed a bit older in the last special and more childlike in this one. Her voice is really grating. The kid doing Rerun’s voice stumbled over his lines and they didn’t bother rerecording. (Maybe they thought it made him sound more realistic?)

But then, at parts, it seemed fine. The Lucy parts were slightly better animation. The quality was up and down. The vignettes went nowhere and would cut off abruptly, feeling unfinished. The connections to Christmas were especially weak in the Linus parts where they threw in the Christmas card angle for the strange many-named girl. That was a somewhat decent idea, but clumsy execution. It all seemed like a series of 4-panel comic strips set to crude animation. This special was designed to be filler, and that’s what it felt like as I watched it. It all felt pointless and light on substance. The Snoopy parts were cute. I liked Lucy unexpectedly punching out Linus. That got a laugh out of me. The Sally story with the tree was tedious and repetitive. How can you make something that lasts about 2 and a half minutes feel three times that? (To be fair, if this story originated in the comic strip, it was probably written that way. Schulz tended to be very repetitive in his multi-part stories, because he felt he had to reexplain the concept every day for non-regular readers.)

Although much of this was related to Christmas and felt on-brand for the holiday, I have to score this one dead last, number three on our list. It was mildly entertaining, cute at times, weird and inexplicable at others. Overall, this flopped for me. Sadly, it was a waste. I can’t imagine watching this nonsense attached to the end of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Title card. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown aired on ABC in 2003. While this one does attempt to tell a story, it’s again mainly recycled jokes and plots from the comic strip. I think that was the intention of the later specials, to have little original material after Schulz’s passing. This is also the longest of the specials, clocking in at 49 minutes. (An hour with commercials.)

This special concerns one of my favorite Peanuts characters, Rerun. I really enjoyed his stories and appearances in the comic as a kid. Why would I like Rerun? Isn’t he just a slightly smaller version of Linus with less personality? Well, yeah, but I liked him anyway. This continues one of my weird traits when it comes to media. I gravitate towards the quiet background characters that don’t get enough love. My favorite character on the Simpsons is a tie between Maggie and Ralph Wiggum. My favorite character on South Park is Kenny. Bob’s Burgers? Regular-Sized Rudy. The Boondocks comic had the entertaining character Caesar who never made it onto the show. You get the picture. I like the characters who are not necessarily main characters but inject their own flavor and personality into the production.

But I digress. Our last special of the post is this one… let’s talk about it!

Snoopy’s plans don’t always work out. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

The special starts with Snoopy and a battalion of birds riding his food dish as a sled. They crash into a tree and Linus thinks they're decorations. So this special started on a high note and I already liked it more than the last one.

EEP. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

We cut to Linus, Lucy, and Charlie Brown making a snowman. Rerun isn't with them. He's on the back of his mom's bike. I remember this scenario pretty well from the comic strip, and could pick out some of the jokes lifted directly from there. It's mainly just a rapid-fire sequence with jokes about how bad his mom is at riding a bike and how afraid he is for his life.

The Van Pelt kids. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Rerun goes to play with Snoopy, but the dog is too busy sleeping. We get a scene where he's sitting on the couch with his siblings and he talks about how everyone at school makes fun of them but he pretends that he's an only child. He's weirdly well-spoken when compared to the previous special, saying things like "replied", "insisted", "resentment", things like that. I didn't have that kind of vocabulary when I was in kindergarten. Lucy talks about how she'll be even more crabby when she's 40 or 50, but really nice once she's 90. Honestly, I can relate. Get off my yard.

The next few scenes are just the three of them, and I don't recall Rerun being this smart in the comic.

They were trying for an artsy shot here. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

At kindergarten, Rerun is doing crafts and so far there hasn't been much in the way of Christmas, except for the tree and decorations in the background. There's a weird sideplot here with a girl he's friends with in class and he says they could run away to Paris together except he doesn't know where Paris is. He's called into the Principal’s office and we get some of that "Wa wa wa" adult-speak.

A side note here, I always thought Rerun was a nickname. In the comic they used to put quotes around it. But on the Principal's desk is a paper that says "Discipline Report: Rerun", so I guess it's his actual legal name?

Anyway, he's sent home early for harassment, which is quite the escalation. He tells Lucy he was fired, but she says he was suspended. You can get suspended from kindergarten? I asked this aloud to Cocoashade who was watching this to me. “Oh yeah! If you’re bad enough. You have to be a really bad kid.“ she replied, and I did not ask her to elaborate on this. Some things are better left to the imagination.

Another crash. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Finally we get to the Christmassy stuff. Rerun wants a dog but his mom won't let him get one. This is the central conflict in the special. Snoopy grabs Linus's blanket and flings him into Lucy and her snowman. Rerun tells them it would be real fun to have a dog. They don’t agree.

Rerun writes a letter to Santa and Lucy says he doesn't have time to read all those letters. Santa spends all day on the street corner ringing a bell and when he gets home, he's tired. Rerun wonders if Santa would leave the dog in the backyard or drop him down the chimney. Lucy makes the point that since mom doesn't want to get him a dog, Santa isn't going to bring him something she doesn't want him to have.

He ignores this and tries to start a tab at a pet store for dog supplies. He gets literally thrown out of there and since he's so sad, Snoopy gives him a doggy bone as consolation.

There’s a lot going on here. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Then there's a part where Lucy wants to kick Rerun out of the sandbox so she and Sally can play in it. It's in the garage since it's cold out. For some reason there's a Snoopy calendar and a Woodstock jack-in-the-box. They could have called this one "We're Selling Out, Charlie Brown!" (That joke brought to you by Cocoashade.) Then he realizes it's time to ride on his mom's bike again and he runs away. There's more bike stuff here: his mom goes through a hedge instead of a brick wall, hits fewer parked cars, it snows, and they're chased by a German Shepherd. These bike scenes were weird and stilted, just joke after joke with no breathers.

Schroeder’s posture is terrible. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

In the next scene, Lucy pesters Schroeder as he plays the piano. As she explains how toy pianos are useless for actual playing, Snoopy and Woodstock come in covered in snow. They shake it off and she runs off, mad. They high five Schroeder and dance to his music.

They wrecked the place! (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Outside, Snoopy dances into Charlie Brown and Rerun, which is kind of cute. Rerun asks if Snoopy has any brothers and sisters. Yes, Belle and Marbles. There's a scene where Marbles rides on Snoopy's doghouse/Sopwith Camel. He shows Rerun a picture of Andy and Olaf, who came to visit once and in this scene we may actually see the inside of Snoopy's doghouse, but I'm not certain. I recall reading somewhere that there was a rule that the inside of his doghouse never be shown... if you recall there was a running gag where the inside was ridiculously big and he could fit way too much stuff in there, including a pool table and a Van Gogh. Anyway, the three dogs meet up outside of his house and then they're in a lavishly-decorated dining room, so I think this is his fabled TARDIS-like house! This ends with Charlie Brown talking about Snoopy's most famous brother Spike, who lives in the desert.

Sittin’ on the stoop. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Rerun asks if he could sometimes play with Snoopy. Charlie Brown says sure, as long as his mom doesn't mind. He tries to play basketball with Snoopy, who's really good at it. He throws two baskets and runs off. Rerun bribes him with a Christmas cookie with sprinkles. They swing and Rerun says the famous line "Happiness is a warm puppy." (Originally said by Lucy in the comic.) Then Snoopy steals the cookies and runs off with them. Snoopy fetches bubbles, which is something else I recall from the comics. They sit on the stoop and Rerun asks how Snoopy decides who to bark at. Snoopy flips a coin. They play cards and Snoopy builds a house of cards. But he refuses to fetch a stick, having Charlie Brown hand Rerun a rejection letter.

After all this, Snoopy stops taking his calls to play, or frolic, or romp. Rerun asks Charlie Brown if he'd sell his dog. Not missing a beat, Charlie Brown asks how much he has. Rerun says 16 cents, but the asking price would be ten million dollars, so he’s out of luck.

This is so creepy. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

He asks Lucy to take him to visit Santa, but she's busy pestering Schroder again, whose house looks like a freaking museum with creepy statues and paintings of Beethoven all around. (There's even an umbrella stand.) All of his music notes fall on Lucy and Snoopy gathers them up in a bucket, using them to decorate a tree.

Now he has a secretary. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

We get another scene with Snoopy as Santa. Sally dictates a letter to Woodstock, who then crumples it up and throws it away. She tells Charlie Brown that she couldn’t get past his secretary. That was amusing.

Hug your local Santa. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Next, Lucy interrogates Santa Snoopy, asking how he's going to get around without his reindeer. He hits her with his bell. He freaks out a girl by eating from his dog dish. Lucy tells Rerun that he's not the real Santa but he doesn't care. He's thrilled when he finds out it's a dog in a suit, so he hugs him, asks for a dog for Christmas, and then donates some money. Snoopy says it's for a worthy cause, so I guess he can talk dog now?

Sally takes a flight. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Back at home, Rerun complains more about how his mom won't let him have a dog and it's getting a bit tedious. Lucy tells him to go ask Charlie Brown how much trouble a dog can be to take care of. Sally has trouble getting dressed to go outside and laments about how she's not made for Winter. (“Me neither, Sally. Me neither,” said Cocoshade.) There's a sequence here where she rides Snoopy's doghouse to go Christmas shopping and they pretend it's a passenger plane. She explains it's the cheapest flight she could get. Rerun looks startled and says, "What's happening Charlie Brown?" He replies, "I haven't the slightest idea." That exchange made me laugh. The rest of the scene with Sally on her "flight" was a bit silly and sort of cute, but felt like padding. I do like that they kept cutting back to Rerun looking disconcerted by what he was seeing, and at the end of it, he says Charlie Brown has the best dog ever.

This happens to me when I decorate the tree too. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Snoopy gets a letter from Spike, who tried to decorate a tumbleweed as a tree, but it blew away. He tries to make a snowman and got tied to a cactus with his string lights. Rerun asks Snoopy to type a letter to Spike asking if he will come and be his dog.

He looks so proud of his snowman. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

There's more Lucy and Schroeder and then Rerun makes a snowman to greet Spike, but it melts. Charlie Brown runs up with a postcard. Spike and his friend (a cactus) are making the trip. Rerun is thrilled, but Lucy tells him mom will never let him keep Spike. Spike arrives and the brothers dance around. Lucy is shocked by how skinny he is and decides to fatten him up.

ROUND. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

It works, Spike is round now.

I love this shot. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

They play with a ball, inventing a game called "slobber ball". They also make up a card game but have no idea how to play it. Then they stomp on a jigsaw puzzle, making those pieces fit. In a very inexplicable moment, Rerun loses a tooth, says he’s getting old, and sticks it in his pocket. There's absolutely no point to that and it is never referenced again. All this stuff was pretty fun, even the weird tooth thing.

Spike has a new trauma. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Rerun has to go for another bike ride and this time he takes Spike with him. After this, their mom says they can't keep Spike, she just felt sorry for him. He's also lost all the weight Lucy put on him and Rerun suspects it was the stress from the bike ride.

Lucy says not to worry, Charlie Brown will find a home for him. Violet, Franklin, and Schroeder all refuse to take him in. Spike heads back to the desert, hugging everyone goodbye. He carries his cactus off and hitchhikes, catching a ride with a kid on a skateboard.

This looks like an awful play. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

To get his mind off losing his dog, Lucy signs Rerun up for the Christmas play. He only remembers his line when Lucy threatens to slug him.

Snoopy is the best. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

We see that Spike made it back home in time to celebrate Christmas by himself. Rerun tries to sell a drawing of Snoopy to Charlie Brown, but he won’t buy it because he only supports starving artists. Snoopy refuses to pull Rerun on his sled. Charlie Brown talks him into it to make the kid feel better, but Snoopy will only ride on it. As Rerun drags the laughing dog down the street, he decides that maybe dogs are too much trouble after all. The end.

Running off with the cookies. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Thoughts: This wasn’t bad, and the quality was much, much better than Christmas Tales. But it was really more of a Rerun special than Christmas. Yes, Christmas was all over this special, but it felt more like a plot device and a setting for Rerun’s stories. It counts, though. We had Santa, decorations, trees, presents, letters to Santa, lists, cookies, everything you would expect.

Sure, there was a lot of padding— what was up with the girl in Rerun’s class and his suspension? That didn’t really go anywhere. All the bike riding scenes felt like padding, but it did work out as being at least part of the reason Spike left. (That, and it slimmed him back down to model.) The lengthy set up to show Rerun’s personality in the beginning felt unnecessary, as were all the scenes with Lucy and Schroeder. (Although Snoopy made use of the music notes.) This easily could have been cut to a half an hour and it would have worked a bit better.

As it was, I did find it cute. Sure there were jokes that didn’t land, and lots of things that would have worked better in the format of the comic. Rerun’s constant refrain of “I want a dog but mom won’t let me” got tedious and repetitive. But I liked it overall. I liked seeing Snoopy’s family (and his house?) and I’ve always liked Rerun and Spike. So this one was pretty fun. A little overlong and stuffed too full, but a fun watch.

I can’t give it top score on the list since it was more about Rerun and his wish for a dog than the holiday. But it was firmly set in Christmas and kept reminding the viewer of that fact. I’ll rank it at number 2 on the list for all the Christmas imagery and gags.

Adorable. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

And that was the other three Charlie Brown Christmas specials! Before last year’s research I had no idea these even existed, since it’s the original that gets all the attention and love. But I wanted to check them all out and see what value I could find in them. Did they stand up against the original? Were they worth existing or just cash grabs by the studios to make more Christmas content to cash in on the holiday? I do have thoughts.

I like that they’re all just strewn around. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Bill Melendez Productions)

Thoughts: Many who hold A Charlie Brown Christmas in high regard would wonder why three more Christmas specials were even needed. While I was critical of how that special relayed its message, I did enjoy it and can appreciate how it became a family tradition for many to watch each year. It had its charm and sweetness to it.

Earlier, I ranked each special on how well I feel like it captured the spirit and intent of the holiday. But how did they all stack up against the original? I feel like It’s Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown did the best at this, in never forgetting its theme and purpose. It had some filler, but never strayed too far from the holiday. Christmas Tales was sloppy and thrown together. While it did concern itself fully with Christmas, it felt pointless and there was no story there. I Want a Dog For Christmas, Charlie Brown had the story and the focus, but lost itself many times in comic strip adaptations and character moments that barely served the plot. So they all worked and fell short in different ways. Put them all together, strip out the filler, and you have a good Christmas special.

For all its faults, A Charlie Brown Christmas excelled more than all of these in telling a coherent story and evoking the warmth and togetherness of the holiday. It attempted to bring in the questions of what the holiday actually means and reference the growing commercialism, but I had doubts on just how well these points were made. They seemed perfunctory, mentioned in passing and not explored fully. The points were there, but didn’t land exactly. The special really seemed more like a vehicle for the comic strip than anything else. So I can see why they would feel the need to create alternatives, to give viewers more than one Christmas offering to choose from.

Interestingly enough, for all the Christmas imagery and despite being about the holiday, in the four Peanuts specials I’ve covered, we don’t actually see anyone celebrating Christmas. That could be why the original only made it to number 3 in last year’s list. (The top two specials I covered both showed characters exchanging presents and spending time with family and friends.) They talk about Christmas, discuss what they would like to receive or give as presents, but we don’t see any celebration aside from plays and recitals.

Where does he keep his instruments? (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Lee Mendelson/Bill Melendez Productions)

It occurs to me that perhaps the reason they don’t depict any Christmas celebration is because it works differently depending on the family you’re born into or find yourself within. For instance, I know many families open their presents on Christmas morning. My family traditionally opened presents from each other on Christmas Eve and then the presents from Santa were waiting for us on Christmas morning. And as we got older and everyone made their own families and lives, we now get together at my house on a Saturday as close to Christmas as we can manage to eat a big meal (which I cook), catch up, and exchange presents. (It’s one of the high points of my entire year.) Some families don’t (or can’t) do the present thing at all. Some families skip Christmas altogether. Some have two or more celebrations. As with everything in life, there’s no “right” way to do it, just your way.

So, in concerning themselves with the imagery and wintery themes, Peanuts keeps from excluding anyone who may do Christmas differently. There are plenty of other “Christmassy” things they can concern themselves with that are somewhat universal… decorating the tree, writing letters to Santa, making Christmas lists, hinting at what they would like to receive, agonizing over what to give. The original special does reference Santa Claus in the letter that Sally writes to him, but doesn’t show any images of him, while the later three specials all feature Snoopy dressed in a full Santa costume. Sure, the inclusion of biblical and religious themes can be considered exclusionary to those who believe other things, but Christianity is an undeniable underpinning in the Peanuts DNA, so it does make sense to see that included.

Happy dancing. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

Whether you believe these specials should exist or not, or whether you think they’re better or worse than the classic one, there was some joy to be found buried in each one. Peanuts was such an important part of my childhood, and every time I see the characters, hear their mild tones, and their inoffensive, wholesome humor, it brings me back to a time when I was around their age, sitting around reading my well-worn Peanuts paperbacks or watching my worn-out VHS tape of the movies or hugging my deteriorating Snoopy plushie. No matter the troubles the kids face, there’s something comforting about the familiarity and the sameness of it all. Peanuts hearkens back to a simpler time, a time when our entire world was ourselves, our friends, our hobbies, and our pets. Adults were just background noise calling to us from another, scarier, and more confusing world. While we still had a lot to learn, in many ways we understood our world much better than they ever could. Peanuts taps into all that and it does it in a universal way that has resonated for over 74 years at this point.

While these three specials varied in quality and content, I did have a lot of fun watching them. They brought me back to my childhood, gave me a few laughs and more than a few smiles. They reminded me of why I love the simple humor and wholesome joy of Peanuts, its quirky world, and its rich characters. Moments like this, where you can forget your problems and the growing darkness in society, if even just for a little while, are blessings and for that, these specials succeeded.

Or, as Rerun pointed out, “Happiness is a warm puppy.“

So pleased with himself. (Credit: Charles M. Schulz, Mendelson-Melendez)

I thank you all for sharing these lesser-known Charlie Brown Christmas specials with me. Although I got opinionated, I did enjoy watching them and revisiting a vital part of my childhood once again. There are lots more Charlie Brown specials and movies out there, so if you want to see more, let me know! I would certainly be willing to take more excursions into the Peanuts universe someday. I’ll be back very soon with my next Christmas offering. Until then, leave some cookies out (with sprinkles) and go pester your local street corner Santa.