Charlie Brown Christmas - search for meaning

“We told Schulz, ‘Look, you can’t read from the Bible on network television,’ ” Mendelson says. “When we finished the show and watched it, Melendez and I looked at each other and I said, ‘We’ve ruined Charlie Brown.’ “

It seems hard to believe that the classic Charlie Brown Christmas could easily have never made it to the screen. It defied the typical style and approach of the day. They wanted real children voices and untrained ones on top of that. This was not done prior in animated films. There was no canned laughter in the background. There was even a moment when the Bible was read describing the Christmas story.

It is for many the passage from Luke near the end which created the most impact. Christopher Shea was just 7 years old when he did the part.

Shea says that for years, in his teens and 20s, he didn’t quite understand his soliloquy’s impact… “People kept coming up to me and saying, ‘Every time I watch that, I cry,’ ” he says. “But as I got older, I understood the words more, and I understood the power of what was going on. Now I cry, too.”

How can something like Charlie Brown carry a message to a generation which Charles Schultz will never see? Perhaps his words were correct. That no matter what , there will always be a market for innocence.

“Sparky used to say there will always be a market for innocence.”

Perhaps there is still a ‘market’ for innoncence in spite of the sophistication and marketing of the holiday season. Somewhere deep within everyone there is a desire to recapture what one might call ‘innocence lost.’ In that case, all one needs to do is to let seek the real meaning of Christmas and let it be real every day of the year.

Amazing that this show was initiated by Coca-Cola six months before the program aired. Coca-Cola may stake claim to the real thing, but Charlie Brown was in search of what was real. A lesson we could all learn from.