It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown

[Dewey_Finn]

I also vote for A Charlie Brown Christmas over It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I always find Linus’s reading of scripture very moving, even though I’m not Christian.

[Sal_Ammoniac]

Just watched the Great Pumpkin last night. It still makes me laugh.

Boy, what a difference from cartoons of today. It sounds like they got real kids to do the voices, for example.

And I love the World War I Flying Ace sequences. They’re filler, more or less irrelevant to the plot, but for some reason, they work. (Morever, they’re interesting as a cultural artifact – they’re about the last vestige of the First World War left in popular culture.)

[Khadaji]

@Dewey Finn

I also vote for A Charlie Brown Christmas over It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. I always find Linus’s reading of scripture very moving, even though I’m not Christian.

Me too on both counts.

@Sal Ammoniac

Boy, what a difference from cartoons of today. It sounds like they got real kids to do the voices, for example.

They did. In fact, they are one of the few to have actually done so. This years marks the 50th anniversary of the Christmas show and much was made about this fact in the write-up I saw.

[Evil_Captor]

@Khadaji

Me too on both counts.

They did. In fact, they are one of the few to have actually done so. This years marks the 50th anniversary of the Christmas show and much was made about this fact in the write-up I saw.

Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1955? In color? Sorry, I’m not buying that one.

[NDP]

@Evil Captor

Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1955? In color? Sorry, I’m not buying that one.

The first showing of **A Charlie Brown Christmas ** was in 1965. This will be its 40th anniversary.

[Baker]

@NDP

The first showing of **A Charlie Brown Christmas ** was in 1965. This will be its 40th anniversary.

And I remember, as a child of ten, how eagerly I waited to see an animated version of my favorite comic strip! I watched it at it’s very first showing!

[Khadaji]

@Evil Captor

Charlie Brown Christmas debuted in 1955? In color? Sorry, I’m not buying that one.

You are right, it was a typo. As NDP pointed out it should have said 40th anniversary. Of course, you could have pointed it out in such a way that I didn’t come away thinking ill of you…

[Good_Egg]

Anyone remember the Robert Smigel cartoon where Jesus is trying to find the spirit of Christmas and sees horrid Kathie Lee specials and whatnot and then looks in a store window and sees the Linus scene?

[kaylasdad99]

@Khadaji

They did [use kids - kd99]. In fact, they are one of the few to have actually done so.

Not only that, only two of the kids show on imdb as having an acting credit before their “Peanuts”- related work.

And not many worked on anything else, ever.

[lorene]

@Good Egg

Anyone remember the Robert Smigel cartoon where Jesus is trying to find the spirit of Christmas and sees horrid Kathie Lee specials and whatnot and then looks in a store window and sees the Linus scene?

Yes! And then does the “Linus happy dance” in his Jesus sandals!!

[FisherQueen]

Right now, I’m downloading this week’s episode of Escape Pod, which appears to be a retelling of the classic tale of a boy and his pumpkin-god.

@Escape Pod

As you are no doubt aware, I am the issue of solid Dutch stock—the prosperous Van Pelt family of St. Paul. Mine was a comfortable and happy childhood, and I spent much of it in the devoted service of the Great Old Pumpkin. For him, I cultivated an annual pumpkin patch. I also evangelized him in the community, relating the tale of how, every year on Hallowmas Eve, the day when the spiritual most strongly encroaches on the substantial, this mightiest of gourds would rise to revel across the world with the most sincere of his adorers. My neighbors were understandably skeptical; after all, not once had this superbeing ever chosen to grace my pumpkin patch or any other place in our town. I vowed that I would coax him into my backyard, and I set out in the manner of a learned man to discover how I might do this.

I hate to speculate before I’ve listened to it, but this sounds rather Lovecraftian to me.

[Evil_Captor]

@Khadaji

You are right, it was a typo. As NDP pointed out it should have said 40th anniversary. Of course, you could have pointed it out in such a way that I didn’t come away thinking ill of you…

Well, no offense was intended.

[Nonsuch]

@Good Egg

Anyone remember the Robert Smigel cartoon where Jesus is trying to find the spirit of Christmas and sees horrid Kathie Lee specials and whatnot and then looks in a store window and sees the Linus scene?

@The Dallas Observer

“A Charlie Brown Christmas is the greatest half-hour American TV has ever produced,” Smigel says. “And you know I’m serious when I say that, because I’m Jewish. The range of subjects that show covers in 22 minutes, and the way it treats each one with humor and sadness at the same time, is amazing. These were kids with adult feelings; they knew what a lonely place the world could be, but they had the determination to keep going.”

Smigel used an audio snippet from his favorite half-hour of American TV in a recent “Fun With Real Audio” segment. After Jesus returns to earth, he stumbles upon Linus Van Pelt delivering his spine-tingling Biblical recitation on “the true meaning of Christmas” under a spotlight. Under Smigel’s direction, the animated Jesus lets a tear fall during Linus’ presentation. This was a purely comic move on Smigel’s part: the son of God crying over a Peanuts cartoon?

“I was in the [Saturday Night Live] studio when they showed it to the audience,” Smigel recalls. “And nobody laughed at that scene. I thought at first maybe they were offended, but I talked to some people afterward, and they said they loved A Charlie Brown Christmas since they were kids, too. They were moved by it. That was not what I expected.”

Link.