"A Charlie Brown Christmas" question.

Just aired here on ABC. I believe it was missing a scene, after the commercial break Charlie tells Lucy to pass out the scripts and it seems like there is a scene right before that that they cut to make room for more commercials. It seems like sacrilege to me, but that’s what DVDs are for, I guess.

Anyway, my question is about the three nameless characters seen in the show. There are the twin girls, wearing purple and dancing on stage and the boy, wearing orange (later a blue coat) with the spikey hair. They have no lines and are never addressed by the other characters, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that they are named characters from the strip. Anybody know?

The twin girls are named “Three” and “Four,” and they have an older brother named “Five” (the boy with spiky hair). In the “Peanuts” comic strip, we learn that their father gave them numbers instead of names in protest of the tendency of modern society to reduce people to mere statistics.

The characters are 5 and his two sisters, 3 and 4, though they are not named as such.

I didn’t watch this year’s telecast, but A Charlie Brown Christmas has been cut from its original length for years. The year ABC acquired it from CBS, they showed it uncut in a full hour time slot.

[Edit: beaten to the punch]

Crap, I missed it already? I hope they air it again.

Yeah. Heaven knows when they’ll show this again.

Does the network air it more than once annually? Now, “The Grinch…”, yeah that’s hard to miss. And “A Christmas Story” gets “Dirty Dancing” amounts of air time around this time of year. But I think “Charlie…” just gets the one.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” will be shown again on December 3rd, according to The Futon Critic.

Great! Now, whatever you do, please don’t spoil the ending.

The December 3 showing will be in an hour time slot, so it should be uncut and complete — it was made for a half-hour time slot.

As for the possible scene cut…

I don’t believe a scene was cut, but a second or two was. Snoopy licks/kisses Lucy, Lucy aaaaaauggghs, and ABC goes to commercial. When we come back from commercial, Charlie Brown starts handing out scripts. We miss the cut to Charlie Brown, Lucy entering on the left, aaaaaauggghing behind Charlie Brown, and exiting on the right.

Anyone else hungry for some Dolly Madison Zingers right about now?

If it’s made for a half hour, how do they stretch it out to an hour? Do they slow-mo it?

No, right after the real show, they show some crappy other Peanuts Christmas special that was made in the 90’s, I think.

I’d forgotten about them. But why is “Five” the older child? Did their father start naming with “Five” and then count down?

I thought he did it as his way of giving in?

Doesn’t Snoopy go “blech”, too?

And yes, definitely craving some Zingers.

I only discovered that the two girls were called ‘Three’ and ‘Four’ a few months ago. They only appear in a couple of strips, and I stumbled across them in one of “The Complete Peanuts” volumes - the 1963/1964 one I believe.

“Those are the girls from the Christmas special!” I said to my wife. She was underwhelmed.

Is the special still sponsored by Peter Paul?

I miss York Peppermint Patties.

Just what the heck is ‘Graphic Blandishment’?

I don’t have the reference and I’m too lazy to search, but I remember that his name is actually longer than 5…5 is his shortened version. Kinda like Bob.

Alright, curiosity got the better of me…about 5

Oh, is that “I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown?” My wife checked that out of the library last week and it was so brutally bad, we had to jam forks in our eyeballs.