December snowflakes

Well, the Christmas tree is up; my partner's birthday was December 6th (which, he would want everyone to know, is also Santa Claus's birthday--or at least the feast day of the real Saint Nicholas, who died on that date, and who, so says Wikipedia, was never officially canonized as a Saint by the Catholic Chuch, though he became one by popular acclaim, so to speak--you learn something new every day!); we had our "Christmas" with my brother's family this weekend; and there is snow on the ground, so I guess for all intents and purposes, the Christmas season is officially in full swing, which means guilt-free Christmas media indulgence!

So the other night, we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas," my favorite seasonal TV program of all. I remember seeing it when it was first broadcast in 1965 (I would have been 9). My mom was making bourbon balls for a school bake sale (and she tells me that they all sold before they made it to the sales floor), my dad was reading American Rifleman or Argosy or some other kind of manly magazine, and my kid brother of 4 was probably getting ready for bed. We were living in Arizona at the time and temperature was in the 60s with no promise of snow (though it did snow at least one Christmas day while we lived there), but the show had such a warm Christmassy feel to it that the weather didn't matter. Obviously, the fact that I remember so much about the circumstances of my first viewing shows the program made an impact on me (I also remember a TV Guide cover that week with Charlie Brown and Lucy), and I continued watching it most years even when I was in high school (and too cool to watch cartoons). It's become a must-see every December; even in the years when I'm feeling Scroogish, I still watch this and the Pee-Herman Christmas special.

The show is now lionized in some circles for its "bravery" in being a kids Christmas show that dares to include a Biblical reading referencing the Nativity, but I think the real reasons it's remained popular are the same reasons that the Peanuts strip ran so long: its dry humor, its self-deprecating satire. and its use of children as portrayers of adult foibles. We've all been Charlie Brown at one time or another, the kid who champions the scrawny Christmas tree even though he knows he'll get laughed at by the crowd. What's kind of odd here is that Charlie is actually redeemed at the end, something that rarely happened in the comic strip, and maybe for that reason, its an ending that still makes me tear up just a little. I always identified more with Linus (yes, I had a favorite blue blanket as a kid, and my partner Don might be persuaded to tell people about my continuing connection with a worn and nubbly brown blanket I still wrap myself up in on cold nights) and I imagine that he grew up into a bookish and somewhat shy but nerdishly charming gay guy (not at all like me). The music is also fabulous--even though the jazzy score by Vince Guaraldi feels so right to us now, I bet it was a daring choice back then for what was marketed primarily as a kids cartoon show. And one last bit of identification with Charlie Brown: I think most of us have, at one time or another, felt that free-floating anxiety which Lucy diagnoses as pantophobia: the fear of everything!