{"id":28480,"date":"2013-12-22T18:41:02","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T18:41:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=28480"},"modified":"2013-12-22T18:42:02","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T18:42:02","slug":"the-lost-characters-of-a-charlie-brown-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=28480","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Characters of A Charlie Brown Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a good chance that you may have seen this on social media last week &mdash; a flash mob got together and performed the dance from <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> on the street in New York City:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"centered\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8bB7obyuuY8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This was shared at the office, and I wrote in the e-mail chain, &#8220;I can never tell 3 and 4 apart.&#8221;  3 and 4 are the twin sisters who do the bop-the-head-to-the-side dance.<\/p>\n<p>Then one of my coworkers said, &#8220;I really like this dude,&#8221; and he attached a picture of 5.  He didn&#8217;t know it was 5, and I wrote back and said, &#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s 5, the brother of twin sisters 3 and 4.&#8221;  To which he wrote back, &#8220;I bet you knew that wihout looking it up on Wikipedia.&#8221;  And yes, I did know that without looking it up on Wikipedia.<\/p>\n<p>And then led me to consider how the <i>Peanuts<\/i> cast changed over the years.<\/p>\n<p>There are characters in <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> who were in their declining years (like <a href=\"http:\/\/peanuts.wikia.com\/wiki\/Shermy\">Shermy<\/a>), who never really had a role (<a href=\"http:\/\/peanuts.wikia.com\/wiki\/3_and_4\">3, 4<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/peanuts.wikia.com\/wiki\/555_95472\">5<\/a>), or who were still to peak before vanishing (like <a href=\"http:\/\/peanuts.wikia.com\/wiki\/Frieda\">Frieda<\/a> of the naturally curly hair).<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, Starbucks issued a special CD\/DVD package of <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> (which I wrote about at the time <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=6088\">here<\/a>), and one of the things I noted is that the cover artwork features a lot of characters who simply didn&#8217;t appear in the special.  Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Franklin, and Woodstock were are yet to debut in <i>Peanuts<\/i>, while characters who did appear in the special are nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/cbxmas.jpeg\" width=\"250\" height=\"238\" align=\"right\" class=\"alignright\" \/>It does make sense why some characters would be featured and not others, though.  The casual fan doesn&#8217;t know who Shermy is (some people think of him as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/celebritology\/post\/shermy-in-a-charlie-brown-christmas-a-tribute-to-an-unsung-holiday-pop-culture-hero\/2011\/12\/05\/gIQAlMe2WO_blog.html\">Taller Linus<\/a>&#8220;), but they do know Peppermint Patty.  When they see Snoopy, they expect to see Woodstock.  And no one, absolutely no one, will care when they sit down to watch <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i>, that Franklin and Marcie are nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n<p>The spirit of the story&#8217;s ending is maintained in the cover art &mdash; all of Charlie Brown&#8217;s friends gathered around the tree that just needed a little love &mdash; even if the actuality of the ending is something different.<\/p>\n<p>(Though, as I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=28285\">wrote three weeks ago<\/a>, Charlie Brown&#8217;s friends are really quite mean and treat him badly in <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i>.)<\/p>\n<p>And, on a tangential note, the opening credits for <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas<\/i> in 1965 had an additional scene.  Snoopy throws Charlie Brown into a tree, and then Snoopy flings Linus into a Coca-Cola sign.  Here&#8217;s the missing scene that you probably haven&#8217;t seen:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zo1PstQ1Yg8\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a good chance that you may have seen this on social media last week &mdash; a flash mob got together and performed the dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas on the street in New York City: This was shared at the office, and I wrote in the e-mail chain, &#8220;I can never tell 3<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=28480\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;The Lost Characters of A Charlie Brown Christmas&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28478,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131],"tags":[3882,61,3904,3905,4100,4162],"class_list":["post-28480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-television","tag-a-charlie-brown-christmas","tag-charles-schulz","tag-linus","tag-peppermint-patty","tag-snoopy","tag-woodstock","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28480","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=28480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}