Yule Classic Its Creators Initially Thought ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ Resembled A Forlorn Holiday Tree

Before Dec. 9, 1965, you called a scrawny Christmas tree a scrawny Christmas tree.

After that date, it had a name.

“That’s a Charlie Brown tree,” you’d say, moving on to the next spruce or fir.

Can it be 30 years since “A Charlie Brown Christmas” first aired?

Good grief, it’s true.

A downbeat mixture of clumsy animation, anti-commercial propaganda, “cool” jazz and a touch of Christian proselytizing, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was unloved and underestimated by nearly everyone involved with its creation, including “Peanuts” creator Charles M. Schulz - until it aired.

An Emmy and Peabody award winner, the show today is one of the most-watched Christmas specials of all time. More than a million video copies are in circulation. Its soundtrack recording is nearing platinum sales status. And in countless homes around the world, the Christmas season still doesn’t officially start until Linus shuffles to center stage, raises a finger and says, “Lights, please.”

“It was one of those amazing miracles that occur every now and then,” Schulz said from his Santa Rosa, Calif., studio. “It’s something you can’t predict.”

Schulz’s daily comic strip, heading for the height of its popularity in 1965 (it landed the cover of “Time” magazine that year), came to life with the help of producer Lee Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez.

According to Mendelson, the first special was prompted by some Coca-Cola advertising executives, who in a meeting asked whether he and Schulz had ever considered doing a Christmas special for TV.”I said, with much bravado, ‘Oh, absolutely,’ ” Mendelson said.

Asked to produce a script outline for the potential sponsors by early the following week, Schulz and his collaborators met immediately.

“We sat in the studio one afternoon and just kind of talked it out and put together what we thought the different themes could be,” Mendelson said.

The main theme - the overcommercialization of the holidays, a perfect vehicle for the melancholy-prone Charlie Brown - surfaced immediately. Individual scenes and subthemes followed, including the lot full of metallic Christmas trees and the idea of building the story around a kids’ Christmas pageant.

“Seventy-five percent of what finally went on the air was in that meeting,” said Schulz, whose suggestion that Linus quote from the Gospel According to St. Luke - sure to be red flag with the network - was the only idea that didn’t get immediate unanimous approval.

Many of the most lovable elements of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” weren’t considered good ideas in 1965. Although the “Peanuts” comic-strip characters thought and talked like adults, and despite the prevailing practice of having adult voice actors perform children’s parts in cartoons, kids were cast to provide voices for the special.

The decision gave the final product unquestionable charm but caused headaches for the producers down the road. After setting the sonic standard for the characters, the original cast members inevitably grew out of their roles.

With the special’s December air date approaching and all the oddball components more or less in place, the production team assembled to view a rough cut.

Schulz, who says today that he didn’t see the final product until it aired, wasn’t present. Good thing. Mendelson says Charlie Brown’s boss’ name was misspelled in the credits.

“The first time I saw it projected on a screen, I turned to the people there and said, ‘We’ve killed it,”’ Melendez said. “I thought we had destroyed the property. I was so unhappy.

“All the bad animation, the bad drawings. There are so many lumps and bumps and warts in that thing.”

(He includes in the bumps and warts some of the special’s best-remembered moments, including Linus’ shuffle to center stage and Snoopy’s first big scene with Lucy.)

Schulz’s first impression, watching the special as it aired, wasn’t much better.

“I thought it was a disaster because the drawing was so poor,” he said.

The “Peanuts” creator’s first (and lasting) impressions aside, the show’s debut received solid ratings, Mendelson remembers, prompting CBS to immediately order several more specials.

“I was stunned,” Melendez said. “I just couldn’t believe it. You know what I thought? I thought, ‘We must despair for our country! The people have no taste!”’

Thirty years after its debut, Schulz still finds parts of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” hard to watch. Especially embarrassing, he said, is the continuity error that marred scenes with Charlie Brown’s droopy wooden tree. (The tree grows several branches between the tree lot and its arrival at the rehearsal site.)

“They were done by different animators, and neither knew what the other was doing,” Schulz said.

Of course, a small industry grew from this stroke of dumb luck.

The team of Schulz, Mendelson and Melendez have produced more than 40 “Peanuts” TV specials (including a 1992 follow-up Christmas show, “It’s Christmas Time Again, Charlie Brown”), a Saturday morning TV series and four feature films. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” has produced lifetime gross revenues of more than $5 million, Mendelson said.

“I can’t believe 30 years have gone by,” he said. “It’s somewhat melancholy when we see (‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’) come around again, but we’re very pleased. I can go anywhere in the world, and if I mention we did ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas,’ they know it.”

MEMO: Program time “A Charlie Brown Christmas” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on KREM-Channel 2.