Last year marked the 50th anniversary of this special. I have read that Charles Schultz was against his producers who tried to persuade him to leave the Bible reading out of the special but he was quoted as saying, "If we don't do this, who will?" Love that man! So an iconic special was born. But wait, last year I was alerted to something I have never noticed in the 35 plus years or more that I have been privy to this special. I have watched this special so many times that it was probably an integral part in my own memorization of that bible passage in Luke, however, I never noticed what one author pointed out and I read this year. It was another blogger that noticed this...
The blogger, Jason Soroski, details the following on his blog:
I am a fan of all things nostalgic and all things Christmas, and so when the two are combined I am hooked, and the Charlie Brown Christmas special falls squarely into that category.
I was in the first grade back when they still performed Christmas pageants in schools (less than 50 years, but still a very long time ago), and our class performed a version of the Charlie Brown Christmas. Since I was kind of a bookworm and already had a blue blanket, I was chosen to play the part of Linus. As Linus, I memorized Luke 2:8-14, and that Scripture has been hidden in my heart ever since.
But while working so diligently to learn those lines, there is one important thing I didn’t notice then, and didn’t notice until now.
Right in the middle of speaking, Linus drops the blanket.
Until this moment. When he simply drops it.
In that climactic scene when Linus shares what ‘Christmas is all about’, he drops his security blanket, and I am now convinced that this is intentional. Most telling is the specific moment he drops it: when he utters the words, “fear not” (at :38 seconds).
In this world we live in it is amazing that a cartoon from 50 years ago was able to nail a truth so clearly, so profoundly, and so tellingly. This cartoon will always remain a part of our family's Christmas tradition, now for more reasons then ever, the messages in it are so clear, and so simple, and so true.