Charlie Brown Christmas: Movie Review

**Contains movie spoilers**

Today I am reviewing Charlie Brown Christmas, a movie that I have never really had an opinion on. This is one of the movies that I think is probably a little overrated, but I don’t hate it. Let me set the scene for you. We begin the movie at an ice rink that the kids are skating on, pretty well I might add, but then Snoopy shows them all up with a far more impressive skating routine despite the fact that he is not wearing any skates and is basically just skating around on his bare feet. Snoopy then throws all of the children into snow banks and steals Linus’s emotional support blanket. You know, the more I think about it, the more I realize that Snoopy is sort of mean, but this movie crosses the line from playfulness to meanness pretty frequently. Now we see Charlie Brown, a child who is depressed for laughs, hanging out with Linus, who basically just tells him that he’s a loser after he asks a philosophical question. I just want to stress that the kid who literally carries around a blanket and sucks his thumb just called one of his only friends a loser. Charlie then goes to Lucy, a supposed psychiatrist (you can tell she’s not a real psychiatrist because she doesn’t charge a billion dollars per visit) who actually sounds pretty educated. She starts listing actual phobias, but then basically just diagnoses him with a fear of everything and then proceeds to complain to Charlie that she doesn’t get any real estate for Christmas. I find it interesting that in this movie Lucy is actually one of the kindest people to Charlie Brown, despite her history as being the opposite. She then offers to let him direct their Christmas Play, which apparently everyone but Charlie was told about (furthering my theory that all of the adults in the Peanuts universe are evil Charlie Brown-hating trombones). He shows up to the play where all of the children are doing the same exact dance move over and over again, and he does not stop them despite that they dance for quite some ti

me. He then goes over his directing shortcuts, which none of them pay attention to, then Lucy gives out the roles. There are some issues with their casting, such as the fact that there is no Jesus, Joseph, or Mary (there is a possibility that Linus is playing Joseph, although he later refers to himself as a shepherd). There is, however, a Christmas Queen. Does anyone remember the Christmas Queen from the nativity? Linus and Charlie Brown go to search for a Christmas tree and come back with what I’m pretty sure is not actually a tree. A twig maybe, but not a tree. I also learned that pink aluminum trees were apparently once a popular thing so… now you know. I don’t really blame the kids for getting upset with Charlie Brown here. I mean, they specifically asked for a pink, aluminum tree and he brought back a twig. However, I would like to note here that this is not really an excuse for the kids to basically destroy Charlie Brown’s personal esteem, if he had any left in the first place. Then after Charlie Brown “kills”  the tree, the kids fix it and abracadabra all is well. Why does Charlie Brown still hang out with these sadistic kids? I leave you now to ponder this sad question over the holidays. Happy holidays, and I hope you don’t have a twig for a Christmas tree.