Enjoying the melancholy undercurrent of Charlie Brown television specials

Presently hovering between Halloween and Christmas, after watching Its the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and on the way to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I was seven years old when Charlie Browns sad tree was first shown on TV in 1965 the same year my parents divorced. Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, my memory of that period has vanished.

I do recall watching Abbott and Costello in Jack and the Beanstalk one evening, and then being told after it ended that they were getting divorced. No recollection of anything after that for at least a year. Perhaps more.

But, despite the neuron wipe, these two cartoons have remained firmly rooted in memory. They are a comfortable pillow, a respite (at this point in life) from late middle age and an instant connection to simple happiness.

Everyone watches Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown Christmas. And everyone loves them. Its not just the happiness they bring, but the melancholy undercurrent that invites remembrance. Every one of us can relate in some way to one of the animated children in those shows. Or to Snoopy. And hes a dog.

Something I recently read, the source of which has been forgotten only days later, put me on the track of other Peanuts TV shows from the 1960s. What? What? (Channeling Linus now.) Yes, my animated Peanuts began and ended with Pumpkin and Christmas (though I had been reading the comic strip since I could, well, read). There has been an enormous gaping hole in my existence there were four more Peanuts specials on TV in the 1960s that I never saw. Read the rest