Why You’ll Want to Watch ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ Again

Sixty years after it premiered, the special that broke every rule about children’s television still has something vital to teach us about hope, melancholy and showing up for each other

Eric Spitznagel,

AARP

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Published December 12, 2025

an image from a Charlie brown Christmas is shown. Charlie Brown is outside in the snow next to Snoopy’s doghouse, pointing at his Christmas tree

CBS was sure ”A Charlie Brown Christmas“ would be a disaster when it aired 60 years ago. But half of America tuned in to watch a depressed kid defend this tree.

Courtesy of Everett Collection

My son doesn’t want to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas with us this year.

This is new. When he was younger, he loved it. We’d make hot chocolate and curl up on the couch, and he’d get genuinely excited when Snoopy decorated his doghouse with enough lights to violate several fire codes. He’d laugh at the kids doing their completely unhinged dance moves during the rehearsal scene.

But now, at 13, he’s lost patience with it.

It’s too slow, he says. Nothing really happens. And he’s not crazy about how they “snuck church stuff into the end.”

This year marks the 60th anniversary of A Charlie Brown Christmas, and it’s become an annual tradition for millions of families. If you’re over 50, you remember what that tradition used to mean. You got one chance to watch it each year, and if you missed it, that was it. No DVR, no streaming, no second chances. Maybe you remember that spinning “CBS Special Presentation” animation that came before it, the one that could give you chills before a single frame of the actual show appeared.

These days, things are different. The special isn’t on free network television anymore. You need an Apple TV+ subscription to watch it, though Apple has made it available to stream for free on December 13 and 14 this year. It’s a far cry from when half of all Americans watching TV tuned in together on the same night.

My son doesn’t share that nostalgia for appointment television or communal viewing experiences. He lives in a world of infinite content, available whenever he wants it. But that complaint about the church stuff at the end? That part I understand completely. Or at least I once did.

‘That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown’

My dad was a pastor, so I couldn’t exactly avoid the religious aspects of Christmas. But that didn’t mean I had to like them. As a preteen in the 1980s watching A Charlie Brown Christmas on our family TV, I loved everything about the special, right up until Linus walked onto that stage, clutched his blanket and started reciting Luke 2:8-14.

The writer Eric Spitznagel’s father, a pastor, is pictured.

Author Eric Spitznagel’s father (pictured) was a pastor who “taught me that Christmas was really about hope showing up when you least expect it.”

Courtesy Eric Spitznagel

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night ...”

The moment that monologue started, I’d feel myself tense up. They were sneaking church into my cartoon, and I resented it. This was supposed to be entertainment, not Sunday school. Why did an animated special about a sad kid trying to direct a Christmas play have to turn into a Bible lesson?

It felt like a bait and switch. We’d been watching Charlie Brown struggle with commercialism, with feeling out of step with everyone around him, with trying to find meaning in a holiday that seemed to have lost its way. And just when the special was building to something real and honest about what Christmas could mean, Linus steps forward and basically says, “Actually, it’s all about Jesus.”

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That line bothered me most of all: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” It felt like the show was telling me there was only one right answer, one correct way to find meaning in the holiday. And if you didn’t believe in that particular story, well, you were missing the point entirely.

But here’s what I didn’t understand then, and what my son doesn’t understand now. A Charlie Brown Christmas is remarkable not in spite of that moment but because of everything surrounding it.

An image from the dance scene in a Charlie brown Christmas is shown. Pigpen is playing an upright bass, schroeder is playing piano and Snoopy is playing guitar

The dance scene where every child moves to their own rhythm. It shouldn't work — that's exactly why it does.

Mary Evans/AF Archive/Everett Collection

This special, which debuted in 1965, shouldn’t have worked at all. The executives at CBS were convinced it would fail. It was too slow. Too quiet. Too sad. Charles Schulz insisted on using real children’s voices instead of professional actors, which meant the dialogue had a choppy, unpolished quality as kids stumbled over their lines. He refused to include a laugh track, which was television sacrilege in 1965. And he absolutely insisted on including Linus’ recitation from the Gospel of Luke, even though the network thought it would alienate viewers.

Yet when it aired, half of all Americans watching television that night tuned in. Not half the people watching cartoons — half of everyone watching TV. Because despite all the ways it broke the mold, or maybe because of them, it connected with something deep and true.

The special moves slowly because childhood actually moves slowly. It’s melancholy because the holidays are often melancholy, even when we’re told we’re supposed to feel nothing but joy. “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus,” Charlie Brown says in the opening scene. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”

What other Christmas special for children would dare to begin that way? Imagine Frosty the Snowman starting with Frosty talking about his seasonal depression. It simply wasn’t done.

Schulz himself struggled with depression throughout his life, and it permeates the Peanuts universe in subtle ways. Charlie Brown’s perpetual anxiety. Lucy’s need for control. Linus’ security blanket that he literally cannot function without. Those weren’t just quirky character traits. They were honest depictions of how children, and adults, cope with a world that often feels overwhelming.

That honesty is what makes Linus’ monologue work, even for those of us who struggle with its religious message. He’s not lecturing Charlie Brown about correct theology. He’s offering his friend a story about hope appearing in the most unlikely circumstances. A story about something beautiful emerging from something humble and overlooked. Much like Charlie Brown’s little tree. Much like, let’s be honest, Charlie Brown himself.

The kids see Charlie Brown’s pathetic little tree, the one they all mocked, and transform it into something beautiful. Not through divine intervention, but through simple human kindness. Through choosing to see potential instead of inadequacy.

“Charlie Brown is a blockhead,” Lucy says, “but he did get a nice tree.”

An image from a Charlie brown Christmas is shown. Charlie is smiling while the other Peanuts characters are singing on a snowy, starry night

Simple human kindness transforms something rejected into something cherished. That’s the special’s true message, and why it endures.

Mary Evans/AF Archive/Everett Collection

Tidings of great joy

My son still doesn’t want to watch A Charlie Brown Christmas this year. And that’s OK. He’ll come back to it when he’s ready. These things can’t be forced.

But I hope that someday he’ll understand what took me decades to figure out. This special has endured for 60 years not because it has the right answers about Christmas, but because it asks the right questions. What are we supposed to feel during the holidays? How do we find meaning when everything seems commercial and empty? What do we do when we’re told to be happy but feel sad instead?

And sometimes it offers something close to an answer. We show up for each other. We take the broken things and help make them whole. We choose to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that tomorrow might bring us tidings of great joy.

I’ve heard those words in two very different places. I’ve heard my dad say them from a pulpit on Christmas Eve, his voice warm and full of conviction. And I’ve heard Linus say them on an empty stage to a confused friend who just needed someone to tell him everything would be OK. “I bring you tidings of great joy.” Both versions give me goose bumps, but for different reasons.

A Charlie Brown Christmas still matters because it dares to be honest about the melancholy that lives alongside our holiday joy. It makes room for everyone who feels out of step, who brings the wrong tree, who can’t seem to feel what they’re supposed to feel. And it whispers, in its quiet, slow, jazz-inflected way: That’s OK. You’re not alone. And maybe things will be better tomorrow.

Good grief, what a gift that is.

AARP essays share a point of view in the author’s voice, drawn from expertise or experience, and do not necessarily reflect the views of AARP.

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