Tag: A Charlie Brown Christmas

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Something Missing

Every so often, a quest becomes the thing of legends.  

Like Frodo Baggins and his journey to destroy the One Ring.

Or Luke Skywalker racing to the aid of a princess he’s never met.

Or Scott Rochat … searching for holiday magazines at the grocery store?

Somehow I don’t think I’ll have John Williams composing music for this one any time soon.

By now, Heather’s used to this. Over 22 years of marriage, she knows that the holidays are a magical time for us both. We enjoy it all: the message, the music, the lights, even my annual battles to the death against easily-torn wrapping paper. (“So we meet again, my old foe …”)

She also knows that each year, there will be one detail that threatens to make me crazy.

Sometimes my obsessive quest produces something wonderful, like when I uncovered the exact edition of “The Story of Holly and Ivy” that  Heather used to love as a child, the one with the red-and-green Adrienne Adams illustrations. But most of the time, it just gets me fixated on one minor brushstroke of a bigger picture.

One year, it was the always-around-since-childhood chocolate coins that seemed to have sold out at every store.

Another time, it was a hunt for a pre-lit tree with colored lights. On that holiday season, of course, 99% of plastic pines for sale had lights that were whiter than a Bing Crosby Christmas.

Last year, it became the magazines.

There are certain things I always stuff Christmas stockings with, from the tasty to the ridiculous.  And the collection has always included three magazines each, tailored to each person’s interests. For instance, our ward Missy might get one title with beautiful dresses, one on classic cars, and one about Star Wars or Harry Potter. (Yeah, life with her gets pretty interesting.)

But last year, the magazines went away.

Stores reduced their sections or removed them entirely. Some titles went out of business, others moved online. And a happy holiday task that normally took 30 minutes tops somehow became a sprawling journey to every business in town that might sell a periodical. My internal dialogue got taken over by Gollum: “Must find the precious …”

Why? Because I had a picture in my head of what the season should be. And this minor detail was blowing it up.

No surprise there. We’re good at that. This year, I suspect we’ll all experience it in spades, as we run into used-to-bes that can’t be because of pandemic safety. Tradition is powerful at this time of year, and disrupting any tradition, from the tall to the small, is unsettling.

But then, at its heart, Christmas is unsettling.

That sounds strange, I know. We think of the season as one of peace. But peace means more than just calm and contentment. It’s a restoration, pushing people out of familiar paths and opening their eyes to something larger.

And in almost every tale of the time, from the sacred to the secular, it’s about a missing piece.

It might be Ebenezer Scrooge, discovering he needs to let the world into his heart. Or Charlie Brown finding a quiet truth amidst the seasonal noise. It might be the girl Ivy and the doll Holly searching for each other without knowing why, or terrified shepherds who suddenly see something new and real burn in the skies overhead.

It’s an awakening. Often an uncomfortable one. Breaking the routine usually is.

But from that awakening comes wholeness. Awareness. Growth.

Peace.

Take the risk. Be unsettled. Don’t just look, but see.

That’s how hearts open. It’s how we find each other again, and find ourselves in the process.

That’s a quest worth achieving.

With or without magazines in hand.

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Making the Break

We’re near the end of a year. So I suppose it’s fitting that we’re at the end of an era, too.

Lee Mendelson died on Christmas Day.

In a way, the timing is weirdly appropriate. Mendelson, a television producer, was part of the power trio that created “A Charlie Brown Christmas” along with creator Charles Schulz and director Bill Meléndez. With its unexpected success, the three would continue to make special after special for years, taking the already beloved Peanuts gang into the stratosphere.

Schulz died in 2000, Meléndez in 2008. And now, with Mendelson’s passing, I’m left a little speechless. So let’s take a moment of silence – maybe accompanied by a talking trombone – and reflect on failure.

After all, Charlie Brown is the most famous failure in the world. He never kicks the football, never wins the baseball game, never gets the little red-haired girl.  But for one brief moment, the “Peanuts trio” was at risk of surpassing him.

Schulz, Mendelson, and Meléndez easily could have gone into history as the men who broke Charlie Brown.

That sounds like hyperbole. But Mendelson already knew that producing a Charlie Brown piece was not a guaranteed success – he’d been shopping around a documentary on the little round-headed kid for months without a single bite before getting the opportunity to do a holiday special on an insanely fast turn-around time. And the choices that the three men in creating that special – well, if it had fallen flat, you could have pointed to any of those decisions, or all of them, and said “Good grief! What were they thinking?”

Things like using real child actors and no laugh track.

Or hiring a jazz composer to do the soundtrack.

Or giving the most popular character, Snoopy, no lines whatsoever.

Or making the climax of the entire show a reading from the book of Luke.

Production finished just 10 days before air time – which Mendelson would later say was the only thing that kept it from being canceled by the network executives, since it had already been scheduled.  It seemed as weak and spindly as Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

You know – the tree that just needed a little love?

Today, of course, the whole thing shines as bright as Snoopy’s doghouse. It’s mandatory viewing, year after year. It had been taken to the breaking point – and held.

My brother-in-law understands that sort of thing very well. Once, while helping with a home repair, he explained his basic philosophy: “You can’t fix something if you’re afraid to break it.”

That’s a vital lesson. And a hard one.

Because boy, do we love to play it safe.

It’s easy to do what you know. After all, a lot of risks fail – that’s why they’re risks. Nobody wants to be the one who gets burned, gets laughed at, gets left with nothing but empty hands and painful memories.  It’s tempting to keep your head down, do nothing, believe in nothing, risk nothing.

And of course, that’s a path that leaves you with nothing.

Everything worth doing involves some kind of risk, whether it’s as spectacular as a television program or as personal as falling in love. (C.S. Lewis famously said that “To love at all is to be vulnerable.”) It doesn’t have to be a stupid risk, mind you; there’s no medals given for playing in traffic. But when the stake is worth the gamble – when you’re not afraid to break it –  that’s when lives can be transformed.  That’s when the song gets written, or the job gets taken, or the family begun.

That’s when memories get made.

Thank you, Mr. Mendelson, for making some of our own.

For you, and for all of us, it was a lucky break indeed.

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It Came Upon the Small Screen Clear

It’s the simple things that mark the arrival of the holidays at Chez Rochat.
Things like discovering which of our pre-lit tree’s lights have pre-burned out, so that we can have the stimulating mental exercise of finding and untangling our old string.
Or the eternal debate as to whether decorating is better done to the strains of John Denver and a chorus of Muppets, or Alvin and his band of helium-voiced chipmunks. (Making the tally “FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!!” versus one “HUUUU-LA HOOOOP!”)
But never is Christmas more surely on the way than when the subsonic tones of  Thurl Ravenscroft begins rumbling from our television speakers.
If you don’t recognize the name, I dare you to read the following words without hearing it in his distinctive voice:
“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch,
 You really are a heel …”
OK, how many sang along?
Thought so.
In a time when traditions seem to have the lifespan of a Raiders fan on Bronco Sunday, a family’s holiday movie choices are all but unshakeable. I have known people who could do without sleigh bells and snow, but would consider the season incomplete if it passed without just one more viewing of Die Hard. (“Yippie-ki-yay to all, and to all a good night.”)
It’s comforting. Reassuring. Familiar, to the point where if the TV burned out, everyone could quote their film of choice letter-perfect – in between jokes about which Clark W. Griswold light display burned things out this time.
For us, it’s a quartet: The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story (yes, the never-ending chronicle of the Red Ryder BB gun) and the George C. Scott version of A Christmas Carol. These old-school classics have dominated the networks, our shelf space, and significant portions of our family’s  gray matter, to the point where we can mentally count down the moments until Ralphie “didn’t say fudge” or the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come rolls through the graveyard on a hidden scooter board. (Hey, special effects are expensive.)
But these four have a lot more in common than their deathless production values. In each case, the story centers around what we think we want versus what we need.
Charlie Brown sets lights  and aluminum trees  against “what Christmas is all about.” Whoville celebrates not the stolen gifts, but the togetherness that lay at their foundation. Mr. Scrooge famously has his priorities shifted in one night, and even Ralphie’s story, the most materialistic of them all, is less about actually getting the coveted BB gun (which – spoiler alert – loses its charm after one accident, anyway) and more about getting a grown-up to actually listen to him for once and take him seriously.
In each case, it’s not about the stuff. It never really was.
OK, maybe it’s a little corny to say it out loud. But at a time when most of us are frantically trying to get through the holiday decathlon, maybe it’s not bad to claim a moment of quiet and think about why we’re doing all this, beyond muscle memory and social expectation.
Is it just about easily-torn paper and misplaced decorations? Does it really come down to whether we can make enough clicks on Amazon before time and money run out?
Or is there something else? Something not just limited to a few weeks in December?
That’s the real gift. And it’s one we’re all going to need going forward.
Though if you still want that hula hoop, I completely understand.