A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Yes, here we actually had a Charlie Brown holiday where Linus was not a complete buzz kill. A change of pace from the norm for him, but his one is a simple tale of a couple of Charlie Brown's friends inviting themselves over for a Thanksgiving day feast when Charlie Brown is intending to go to his grandmother's house so he and his pal Linus and Snoopy cook up a feast all on their own. This grand meal including plenty of toast and popcorn. I like this one, to me it is the funniest of the three most well known ones...Halloween and Christmas being the other two. This one is also about the poor holiday stuck between Halloween and Christmas and to me seems to be almost a forgotten holiday these days as the retail stores push Halloween and Christmas and seem to ignore Thanksgiving all together. This one really shows the friend or family member that likes to kind of invite themselves to dinners and things like that this time of year as the culprit in this case is the ever exuberant Peppermint Patty. Marcie comes along too. I know lots of people that kind of tag along events such as these mainly because they do not want to cook themselves so I guess this one sort of hits home, and for me is the funniest and best of the holiday trio.

Charlie Brown and Sally are going to their grandmother's for Thanksgiving. Peppermint Patty calls and invites herself and then Marcie and Franklin to Charlie Brown's for Thanksgiving. Linus suggests Charlie Brown have two Thanksgiving dinner with the help of Snoopy and Woodstock. Peppermint Patty is angered by the lack of traditional Thanksgiving food but Marcie convinces her to apologize. Charlie Brown's grandmother calls and invites everybody to her place.

Peppermint Patty's voice by Christopher DeFaria is really rough and raspy. It's a little bit jarring. Otherwise, this is a charming Charlie Brown holiday special and it holds up well. It has the innocence of the simple cartoon drawings. Also it's a single story without the usual detours. This just has the sense of the impending Holidays that appears every Fall. I do wonder if there is anything wrong with Woodstock eating turkey.

Thanksgiving is not really something that is acknowledged and certainly not something that is celebrated in Scotland, but I watch this TV special every year in the run up to Xmas just to get me in the mood. The cartoon begins with the usual gag where Lucy yanks the football away from Chuck. I guess he'll never learn to distrust women, eh.

But his main grief in this one is the fact that all of his friends invite themselves over to his place for Thanksgiving despite the fact he's going to his grandmother's for the celebration. Snoopy and Woodstock work together (and against each other) to prepare a slapdash dinner including toast, jelly beans and popcorn. Needless to say the rest of the Peanuts gang are far from impressed with the menu, though that doesn't stop Peppermint Patty putting the moves on Chuck.

All this talk of food has made me hungry.

I remember seeing "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" back in the 80s when I was just a child. Every Thanksgiving they would show this at night time, since I was around 6-9 years old I couldn't stay up late to watch cartoons. But my parents made exceptions in these cases. Heck, I even recorded this on BETA! Thats right those tapes that are half the size of VHS tapes! Now that I'm older I wonder where time went, one day I'm a kid sitting on the living room rug watching Charlie Brown the next day I'm in my room hearing the advertisement on TV for the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving holiday special. Since I saw this when I was a kid I must say I was scared of the last portion of this presentation, the part where Charlie Brown camps out of a house. Damn that scared me! All I can say is that this is a classic for anyone who saw this as a kid. What's wrong with those people that gave this a 1 rating?!?! Some people just have problems.

Another big hit with the kiddos. Some continuity with It's A Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, most obviously with Lucy tricking Charlie Brown into running to kick the football and then withdrawing it. But there are other interesting connections: once again, Linus is the bearer of the festive traditions. In It's A Great Pumpkin, he gets it wrong, producing a holiday grotesque; in this, he gets it right, offering historical reconstructions of the pilgrim's voyage, troubles over the course of the first winter, and finally the first thanksgiving. These narratives seem a bit forced, underlining the loose connection of the origin story of Thanksgiving to the celebration itself, even in the 1970s. Both specials highlight the enjoyment of the children even if they do not quite reproduce the standard script of the holiday. In this case, Charlie Brown ultimately gets it right, by showing hospitality, even if he is unable to offer his friends who have invited themselves over (following Peppermint Patty) a real feast; he is rewarded when his grandmother saves the day. Once again Snoopy provides the humor, with his struggles against the folding chair, and loyal efforts at making bread, popcorn, and an unidentified, but strangely appealing, jello dessert. There's a bit of subversion this time: we learn at the end that he has been hiding a Turkey and pumpkin pie the whole time, for himself and his pet bird, Woodstock.

Also funny that Sally made the same complaint in the 1970s that the kiddos and I do now: Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving! Reviewing November 2020; previously watched 2017 and 2018.