The Atlantic
What gives the 1965
December 24, 2020
Girl Land
“Lights, please.”
For half a century, it’s been one of the most significant phrases in American Christianity. A prelude to something sacred in an unlikely place: the Gospel of Luke, King James translation, as recited by Linus van Pelt in
A Charlie Brown Christmas.
My parents were atheists; I knew almost nothing about Christianity as a child, although I got the lay of the land when I was sent to Catholic school in sixth grade. Before that, my parents especially my mother actively worked to keep me and my sister free from religion, Christianity in particular. But we had our gods. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny reigned over us, with great kindness and generosity, and if we came, eventually, to a crisis of faith, we dealt with it privately. My sister and I understood that our feelings about Christmas were very important to our parents. The brief transmitted in the silent language of the family was to be happy,
How Charlie Brown trees lifted spirits, and more stories of joy in pandemic times
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I think we re all ready to put 2020 in our rearview mirror, but we re not there yet. If you find yourself looking for some way to inject a little cheer into what promises to be a dreary holiday, check out these albums some classics and some newer that are guaranteed to help you make the most out of what will no doubt be an isolated yuletide. Here are six of my favs in no particular order. click to enlarge Photo Courtesy Of CBS
WILLIE NELSON Filled with classic covers and the title track Nelson wrote in 63 that became a hit for Roy Orbison,
The central plot of
A Charlie Brown Christmas was inspired by producer Lee Mendelson, who told Schulz that he and his wife had celebrated a recent Christmas by reading Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Fir Tree” to their children. Schulz spun that into a tale of two trees, hitting upon an impossibly neat symbol of commercialized: aluminum Christmas at war with good ol’ classic evergreen.
I ask you to look at the above picture, however, and imagine yourself in 1965. If you were actually going to buy an aluminum Christmas tree, you were probably buying an Evergleam from Aluminum Specialties in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. You were going to get it at a department store or order it from the Sears catalogue, not at a tree farm the whole point was that it came in a box and was easy to assemble right there in your stylish mod home! So including an actual fake tree farm is freaking brilliant satire, which unfortunately backfired on me.
not bugs. The Whos are just small people.”
Helen’s vision would win out in the TV special a decade later, but the Whos in the book do resemble talking insects, the descendants of Ted’s early ad contracts with Standard Oil’s premier bug spray. Her influence over the book is comprehensive ― the narrator wonders if the Grinch’s shoes are a few sizes too small before concluding that, actually, it’s his heart that is undersized.
After wrestling over different religious themes for the ending, Ted and Helen decided to cut out the Bible altogether and let the Grinch settle down to dinner with the Whos, slicing the roast beast as everyone lives happily ever after.
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