You know, I was finishing dinner, getting ready to come back here to my office and continue research for a series of strips about famous Indians (the Native American kind, not the “real” kind).  Before I could summon the energy to get up from the sofa, the episode of Andy Griffith I was watching ended and out of nowhere the Charlie Brown Christmas special came on. This is a terrible thing to come on if you’re not expecting it. You really need to prepare yourself emotionally–I could feel my eyes start burning practically from the opening credits.

And the thing is, the Charlie Brown Christmas special is hardly a wonderment of innovation, right? Voiced by stuttering children, edited by a person who was clearly drunk or insane or both, and featuring some of the most baldly, unapologetically heart-on-sleeve writing you can imagine–it’s hard to imagine that this ever got made. Clearly the fact that Charles Schulz was already swinging some heavy money bags back in ’65 had a lot to do with it; but if Peanuts is one of the most influential, nuanced, and downright graceful pieces of cartooning ever, then the Charlie Brown Christmas is its polar opposite.

And still with the water works.  What gives?  It never even occurred to me to get up and NOT watch it.  When I was a kid it wasn’t Christmas until this special had come on.  I would start scanning the TV Guide for it in November, still excited from the just-viewed “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!”.  I loved it then, and for some reason I love it now.  It’s hard to find someone who doesn’t love it, who doesn’t instantly melt a little when they hear that lonely, plaintive “Christmas Time Is Here…” song start up, like God’s own orphans warbling out their lonesome carols. 

What is it about this weird mishmash of a cartoon special that resonates so much with, of all people, children?  Within the first few minutes of the thing, Sally turns to Linus and utters, in her real-little-girl voice, the title of this post, in reference to what she expects to get for Christmas.  And just seconds later, after Charlie Brown tells psychiatrist Lucy that he’s depressed–literally, he says, “I feel depressed.  I know I should be happy, but I’m not”–she comes back with this gem:

“I think we’d better pinpoint your fears.  If we can find out what you’re afraid of, then we can label it.” 

What child ever got  that?  I’m sure I didn’t–that’s practically over my head today, and I’m 34 years old.  The first 10 minutes of the special are filled with zingers like that, some even more depressing.  And I don’t mean to say I think the thing was so well-written that a kid couldn’t get it.  I think this thing was terribly written.  But still, there I sit on the sofa, still with some cream-style corn drying on my lip, knowing I’m going to break down once Linus makes his speech near the end. 

I watch this thing pretty much every year, if I’m lucky.  To me, there’s almost nothing that more perfectly sums up the awful sense of loss, of wistful longing, that separates childhood and adulthood.  Trying to remember what it felt like to be a kid, to have no responsibility, to suffer the mercurial joys and assaults that childhood–and especially other kids–can wield; it’s almost impossible.  The Charlie Brown Christmas special is a thing made by grown men, especially one grown man who would spend his life trying to explain, or at least cope with, his own sadness.  I think that’s what makes it still special somehow, 30 years after seeing it for the first time, and 43 years after it was made–these old Charlie Brown TV specials are basically a bunch of grown adults getting together and trying to approximate childhood.  There’s virtually no artifice in the thing at all–they’re certainly not trying to sell something, or at least weren’t at that point. 

And for all its warts and infirmities, it does something amazing and beautiful.  Maybe it’s the faltering voices of children reading their lines, or the ramshackle way the thing is put together.  But whatever the reason, this scene lays me out every time:

You can’t argue with tears. Tears mean you lose, if you’re trying to analyze, or be snarky, or whatever smart-guy thing you thought you had in mind. It’s kind of nice, and kind of terrible, that crying a little bit during the Charlie Brown Christmas special, with creamed-corn still in your beard, is a yearly Christmas tradition. I mean, show me somebody whose life isn’t kind of nice and kind of terrible, and I will show you someone who is not a fan of Charlie Brown.