A Charlie Brown Christmas | Vince Guaraldi Trio

  A Charlie Brown Christmas  |  Vince Guaraldi Trio

release date:  1965             record label: CBS

   

track
 listing:     1) O Tannenbaum

                 2) What Child Is This?

                   3) My Little Drum

                   4) Linus and Lucy

                   5) Christmas Time Is Here

                   6) Christmas Time Is Here (Vocal)

                   7) Skating

                                                                             8) Hark, The Herald Angels Sing

                                                                             9) Christmas Is Coming

                                                                            10) Fur Elise

                                                                            11) The Christmas Song

                                                                            

“Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer…”

I think it’s safe to say that, in terms of the music world at least, there is nothing I hate more than Christmas music.  Except Nickelback.  They’ll always be at the top of that list.  

But before you cast me as the Grinch, let me explain.  It’s not really the music itself that makes my heart shrink to two sizes too small; in fact, some of the Christmas hymns, like “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” are among my favorite songs of all time.  My main complaint is with timing.  In my world, and I realize I’m the only one who lives there, Christmas music should not be heard in public, like on the radio and in stores, until December.  As soon as December 1^st rolls around, please feel free to play the same fifty Christmas songs that we’ve been listening to since the middle-ages; if it makes you happy, play them on repeat for the better part of the next month.  Listen to those songs to your hearts content.  But please don’t start in November (or even October) or I may have to run you down with my one-horse-open-sleigh.  Not really.  But I’d want to.

All that to say, A Charlie Brown Christmas is the exception to that rule.  I was given this album as a freshman in college; it was love at first listen.  Of course I knew most (if not all) of the music from watching the Charlie Brown Christmas Special on TV as a child, but that did nothing to dampen the magic contained within the songs found here.  Even apart from the fond childhood memories, the Vince Guaraldi Trio holds its’ own musically.  This album contains deep jazz grooves, highlighted by the piano playing of Guaraldi and underscored by the bass of Fred Marshall and percussionist Jerry Granelli. Although it was composed for a thirty-minute cartoon, this music has some serious kick to it. 

Like much of the world, I consider myself an unabashed fan of all things Peanuts: comic strips, TV specials, and music.  There is not much in our world that has transcended both time and place quite like Charlie Brown and his cohorts.  At the height of its popularity Peanuts was being printed in 2,600 newspapers, with a readership of 355 million in seventy-five countries; eleven years after the death of artist Charles Schulz, repeats of his comic strip still appear in newspapers nationwide.  It’s a sure bet that as the days count down toward Christmas, the Charlie Brown Christmas Special will be taken down off shelves and enjoyed by both the young and the young-at-heart. 

Only two of the eleven songs on this album contain lyrics making this the perfect music for my all-time favorite pastime:  thinking.  In college I would often study with A Charlie Brown Christmas playing in the background, no matter the time of year.  As I sat, listening to this album deep into the night, my thoughts turned to the universality of Peanuts.  It appears that Charlie Brown, Linus and Lucy all belong to that rare form of art which becomes timeless; art that lives beyond the lifetime of the artist.  But why did a comic strip about a kid, his friends, and his dog come to mean so much, to so many people?  What is it about Peanuts that keeps generation after generation coming back to spend more time with Charlie Brown and his pals?   

First, Peanuts is simple.  It takes us back to elementary school, a time when life seemed much more effortless.  Our biggest concerns were impressing the little red-haired girl at school, trying not to fall over when it was our turn to punt the football, and playing with our dog.  Life was slower then.  It seemed to make more sense.  Our friends were our friends just because they were.  Words like IRA, 401K and taxable income meant nothing to us.  The words that meant something, the ones that carried magic, were things like “baseball,” “summer vacation” and “Christmas.”  As children, when a groove hit our ear, there was no need to stop the dance that begged to come out.  We danced and sang with all our might and we were not ashamed.  But we couldn’t wait to grow up and now that we’re there, we have realized, too late, that childhood is not something to be wished away.  It is a sweet taste to be savored.  Somehow, Peanuts brings that flavor back into our lives; we remember and taste childhood again, if only for a moment. 

Secondly, Charlie Brown and his pals connect with so many of us because we see ourselves in their characters.  We’ve all given unsolicited advice like Lucy, or felt that, if only we could carry around our baby blanket like Linus, then the world might not be such an intimidating place.  Like Snoopy we’ve dreamed up alter-egos for ourselves and, just as Sally has done with Linus, we’ve all set our affections upon someone who wasn’t interested.  But most of all, we’ve been Charlie Brown himself:  nervous, lacking self-confidence, hard on ourselves to a fault.  But at our best, we’ve also possessed Charlie Brown’s persistence to work his hardest, no matter how long the odds.  Initially, we are attracted to the bits of ourselves we see in each character, but what keeps us coming back year after year is the one trait that the Peanuts gang possesses which, so often, we do not.

That “thing” that Charlie Brown and his pals possess, which endears them to us all, is bravery; they are not afraid to believe their beliefs.  In the midst of hardship and a world which tries to convince them otherwise, they hold on to faith.  Though his baseball team rarely wins a game, Charlie Brown still acts as their pitcher and coach; he hasn’t given up on his team of friends.  He still believes they can win.  Likewise, despite the fact that Charlie Brown is supremely untalented at flying kites, he still goes outside on windy days to try again.  He hasn’t given up yet and he isn’t about to quit trying.  Although everyone leaves him to sit alone in a field of pumpkins on Halloween, Linus still believes that the Great Pumpkin will come; his faith stays strong till the end.  At Christmas time, Charlie Brown ignores the cries of his friends and dares to love a tree rejected by the rest of society; viewing it through the eyes of faith it is transformed, for him, into a most beautiful sight.  When the rest of the crew loses sight of the true meaning of Christmas, Linus quotes the scriptures from memory.  He knows why he celebrates Christmas and dares to believe in the miracle of a Savior’s birth. 

Charlie Brown is so much more than just entertainment about a boy with a string of bad luck; it is training for life.  Charlie Brown, in facing his grief with strength, sets quite an example for us to follow.  When life gets hard, maybe, like Charlie Brown, we need to stand up to it with simplicity, persistence and faith.  Perhaps doing so will not only change our outlook on our situation, but on ourselves as well.  Then, in the words of Charlie Brown himself, we may be able to call that time in our lives “good grief,” because it transformed us into something better. 

“We also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope…”

- Romans 5:3-4