A Charlie Brown Christmas by Lee Mendelson

Mendelson, Melendez, and Schulz assured him it would be better once there was music and color. He was put off by the slow pacing of the story. Halfway through production, when the team was still working with black-and-white illustrations, a McCann executive (Mendelson is almost certain it was Neil Reagan, the older brother of President Ronald Reagan) showed up in Sebastopol to check in on the progress. Several days later, the agency told them they had a short six months to deliver the animated special. They cranked out an outline and put it in a Western Union shipment to Atlanta. Mendelson had just read The Fir-Tree by Hans Christian Andersen and suggested the story include a tree that is as sad and misunderstood as Charlie Brown. Schulz wanted the show to focus on the childhood stress of putting on a Christmas play.

The three met in Schulz’s office in Sebastopol, California. Mendelson rang animator Bill Melendez, who had helped animate a two-minute segment in the never-aired documentary. “And I said, ‘It’s something you’re going to write tomorrow.’” “Schulz said, ‘What’s that?’” Mendelson recalls. He called Schulz and told him they’d sold A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Desperate after his documentary imploded, he lied and told the agent that, in fact, he and Schulz had discussed such a project. No networks had wanted it, but after Charlie Brown and the gang were featured on the cover of Time magazine, Coca-Cola’s ad agency, McCann Erickson, got the idea for a holiday special and approached Mendelson. The show originally sprang from a failed documentary Mendelson had tried to make about Schulz. In 1965, no one believed that Charles Schulz’s story of an underdog sticking to his principles in the face of constant bullying would make for good TV. What most people don’t realize is that the holiday classic barely made it into production - and was almost buried forever.

“If we ever have to fight bullying, at so many levels, this is it.” He keeps fighting back and keeps enduring,” Mendelson says. “These people identify with Charlie Brown maybe more than ever after this election season. Lee Mendelson, who produced A Charlie Brown Christmas, thinks its message might be particularly relevant this year, with at least half the population feeling like someone pulled the football away. For last year’s anniversary, President Obama called the special “one of the country’s most beloved traditions.” A Charlie Brown Christmas, based on the “Peanuts” comic strip, has aired every December for the last 50 years - longer than any other holiday program besides Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. For many, one annual ritual will provide a welcome distraction: watching a depressed child get berated and mocked relentlessly. Soon, millions of American families will come together to celebrate the holidays and passive-aggressively debate whether the country has just been saved or destroyed.

A Charlie Brown Christmas by Lee Mendelson