Boy Are We Stupid, Charlie Brown
My #1 Favorite Christmas Special and Why It Works When It Shouldn't.
“Boy are you stupid, Charlie Brown.”
There are so many reasons why this perennial special from 1965 shouldn't work. It's weird, sloppy, has no real plot, its storyline meanders all over the place, and it feels like it was edited with a chainsaw.
The audio sounds like clips of different takes spliced together because they used real children to voice the characters who could barely read one take properly, so they had to cobble together the words and syllables that sounded passable.
The production team were aware of its imperfections and thought it was a disaster — and the networks didn’t initially want to show it.
Animation made today is clean and polished, but there are many moments in this one where the animation cels don’t line up properly, and there are very strange & jarring jump cuts where characters are only against a one-color background.
And yet, this is exactly why it works, and why it endures. Because Christmas is weird. It's sloppy. It has no real plot. Its storyline meanders all over the place. It leaves us feeling like our lives have been edited by a chainsaw and we’re on an animation cel that’s not even lined up to match our background.
The weird thing about Christmas is that it’s marketed as a season of joy, but it’s held during the darkest, coldest time of year. There’s something about the color palette and deep blue of the night sky in those tree lot scenes that perfectly nails what the biting cold of the air must feel like.
And why is everyone so mean-spirited in this special? How does that reflect the spirit of Christmas? Because it reflects what the season reveals about us. We’re “supposed to be happy, but we’re not.” We’re all rude little bastards who yell at each other, eat like pigs and only care about ourselves.
…until Linus reminds us that at the first Christmas, our Creator came down to become one of us anyway.
It endures because we are part of the story. We are all that poor little tree that just needs a little love. That's why I watch it every year. It's that little love.
