(courtesy Hallmark Books)
If ever a season felt completely at home in a comic strip, then it’s Christmas in Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip.
You could, of course, also make largely the same case for Halloween and while Linus and the Great Pumpkin is inherently memorable, overall its Christmas that really comes alive in this most enduring and iconic of comic strips.
In The Joy of a Peanuts Christmas – 50 Years of Holiday Comics!, which came out in 2000, the same year sadly that Peanuts‘ creator died, Hallmark has gathered together holiday strips from the 1950s through to the 1990s, and what emerges most strongly is now much our intrepid bunch of characters love this time of the year.
While Lucy might thunder and rail about New Year’s resolutions and is adamant he wants to be called Joe not Santa, she’s also just as apt to hug her brother Linus, especially when Charlie Brown reminds them as he does in a strip on November 11, 1961, that her sparring with her brother isn’t going to get onto the good list.
Lucy might be the most calculating of all the characters, who are each profiled in a double-page spread, along with a representative Christmas quote, but even she knows that sometimes you just have to be quiet and go along with the system, especially if gifts lie at the end of the journey.
Linus, by way of contrast, is a true believer, and when Charlie Brown mistakenly asks him in a strip on 26 December, 1968 if he had a “good Christmas”, Linus immediately asks him what he means by that – the receiving or giving of gifts, the weather or Christmas dinner or his overall spiritual wellbeing?
Linus BELIEVES with a delightfully innocent intensity and it stands in contrast to some of the others who while they happily participate in Nativity plays (even if Olaf, Snoopy’s brother forgets his lines and meows instead of baa-ing) and exchanging of gifts, aren’t fervently invested in the why of the holiday.
(courtesy Hallmark Books)
But it’s Charlie Brown, I think, who really embodies the way Peanuts approaches Christmas.
He may get pushed down again and again, and mocked and laughed, and elements of Christmas may let him down, but he gets up and tries again, believing that a season this pure and special can never be bad and that you just need to stay optimistic and you’ll be okay.
Charlie Brown instructs Lucy on the fact that Santa comes down the chimneys of every house in the world as if its gospel truth (15 December, 1952), he thinks it’s entirely reasonable to ask Santa to have lunch with him (18 December 1958) because it’s easier to say things in person than in a letter, and he’s happy to spend the time to wish everyone “Merry Christmas to all” by painting it on a long series of fence palings (25 December, 1953).
You’d think someone so battered and bruised would be well over everything including Christmas, and yes, there is the occasional trademark “Good grief” but and large Charlie Brown keeps the faith, upholds the optimism, and talks up his friends to Santa, even if Snoopy objects to have his services offered to pull the sleigh (7 December 1963).
Regardless of the character, and The Joy of a Peanuts Christmas – 50 Years of Holiday Comics! also profiles Schroeder ( “I’ve been reading up on winter”), Marcie (“My family said it’s all right to believe in Santa Claus, but not the Great Pumpkin”) and Peppermint Patty (“Don’t sigh like that ma’am … Christmas vacation is a long way off”) and even good old Spike, Snoopy’s brother (“One of the great joys of life is sitting by your Christmas tree while big fluffy snowflakes float gently to the ground … or a nice sandstorm”) among many others, what this wonderful collection reminds us of how wonderful Christmas can be, how much richer it is with friends arounds us, and that while life can be tough, Christmas is often, quite honestly, the most wonderful time of the year, and if we lean into its many wonderful qualities, we can help but be uplifted and made cheery (even if someone does hang a candy cane off our nose!).