Random Facts About ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" was huge when I was growing up, and it still is a staple for many families across the USA. It's going to air tonight on ABC and I will be sitting down to watch the Peanuts gang celebrate the season with my family.

That being said I thought I'd share with you some little known facts about "A Charlie Brown Christmas":

• Just before her remarks about Christmas being a big commercial racket, Lucy refers to Charlie Brown simply as Charlie. This is the only time she does this in any of the TV specials: every other time it's Charlie Brown.
• Whenever the ornament makes the tree fall it actually represents commercialism taking over Christmases true meaning. But when the kids fix it then it means the meaning has been found.
• The special broke many of the rules prevalent for animated holiday specials during the 1960s: it didn't make use of a laugh track; real children were used for the character voices instead of adult actors imitating children's voices; and Biblical references were used to illustrate the true meaning of Christmas.
• Jefferson Airplane wanted autographs from all the kids who voiced the characters.
• The version of the show broadcast on CBS-TV until 1997 and older video releases are edited: they leave out a scene where the gang throws snowballs at a can on a fence. The Paramount and Warner video releases are complete and unedited.
• None of the children who voiced the characters received credit at the end.
• A version with a laugh track was produced but later discarded after the success of the broadcast version.
• Kathy Steinberg, who did the voice of Sally Brown, had not yet learned to read at the time of production, so she had to be fed her lines, often a word or syllable at a time, which explains the rather choppy delivery of the line "All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share".