On Saturday I put up my Christmas tree. It looks nice, especially against the brick wall in my living room. It’s properly festive.<\/p>\n
Yesterday evening, I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i>. How could I not? It’s not Christmas without A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i>, I’ve already listened to the album at least twice since last week, and ABC will flog the special mercilessly over the next four weeks.<\/p>\n
Last year, something about the special clicked with me — Charlie Brown is an idiot, and his closest friends are mercilessly cruel<\/a>.<\/p>\n Here was my argument.<\/p>\n There’s a Christmas play. Scripts have been mimeographed. A venue has been rented. A cast has been found.<\/p>\n Charlie Brown knows none of this.<\/p>\n He doesn’t know there’s a Christmas play until Lucy tells him. He doesn’t know about the scripts or the venue. And he really<\/i> doesn’t know about the cast, which just so happens to include all of his best friends and<\/i> his own sister and dog.<\/p>\n There’s no charitable reading for this.<\/p>\n Either Charlie Brown is an oblivious idiot so that he was totally unaware that there would be a Christmas play, or his friends are cruel bordering on the evil by hiding this from him.<\/p>\n I mean, imagine this conversation:<\/p>\n Charlie Brown: Sally, where were you today? I couldn’t find Linus, either.’ No one looks good here.<\/p>\n Everyone points to A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> as a piece of heartwarming, uplifting television, and it’s been rewarded for that. I’m not trying to ruin your Christmas here, but A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> isn’t what you think it is. It’s a cynical piece of writing, and the characters are jerks and idiots at best.<\/p>\n Which, actually, makes it true to Peanuts<\/i>. Charles Schulz’s comic strip was a much darker piece of work than most people realize, especially in its first two decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Saturday I put up my Christmas tree. It looks nice, especially against the brick wall in my living room. It’s properly festive. Yesterday evening, I watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. How could I not? It’s not Christmas without A Charlie Brown Christmas, I’ve already listened to the album at least twice since last week,Continue reading “The Dark Underside to A Charlie Brown Christmas”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28286,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[3882,3881,62,4099],"class_list":["post-28285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television","tag-a-charlie-brown-christmas","tag-charles-schuz","tag-charlie-brown","tag-peanuts","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSally: I was at practice for the Christmas play.
\nCharlie Brown: Christmas play?
\nSally: My Sweet Baboo and I were performing in the Christmas play down at the school. Isn’t my Sweet Baboo so lovely?
\nLinus: I’m not your Sweet Baboo!
\nCharlie Brown: Christmas play?
\nLinus: You should have been there, Charlie Brown!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n