Holiday Memories: A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

 

There have been nearly fifty animated Peanuts specials since 1965, starting with A Charlie Brown Christmas; eight of these have been made after Charles Schulz’s 2000 death. The half-hour A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (1973) was the tenth one produced, although only the third Peanuts special that was holiday themed. It has been running fairly continuously since I was ten years old, which makes the 20^th of this month its fiftieth anniversary.

The story is simple. After a short segment of Lucy luring Charlie Brown into trying to kick the football as part of a Thanksgiving tradition (’Isn’t it funny how some traditions just fade away’), he receives a phone call from Peppermint Patty, who invites herself to Charlie Brown’s Thanksgiving ‘bash’ before he can explain that he and his family are going to his grandmother’s home for the holiday later that afternoon. Things are further complicated when Peppermint Patty calls and reveals she has invited two other friends, Marcie and Franklin, to come with her. Charlie hangs up in despair.

Apprised of his problem, Linus makes a suggestion. Why not have one Thanksgiving meal for Patty and party, and then go to the family gathering afterward? Although he can only make toast (but he can’t butter it very well), he latches onto Linus’s plan. They enlist Snoopy’s aid, and after a struggle with a folding chair while setting up an outdoor tennis table, he reports to the kitchen to help prepare the impromptu feast. This includes towers of toast and pan after pan of popcorn. These, along with jellybeans and pretzel sticks, provide the bulk of the meal.

Patty, Marcie, and Franklin arrive, expecting the traditional feast of turkey, stuffing, cranberries and pumpkin pie. They adjourn to the backyard table, and after Linus expounds on the history and meaning of the First Thanksgiving (mentioning ‘the Great INNN-dian chief, Massasoit’), he repeats the prayer said at that first gathering. Then Snoopy starts to serve, putting together the simple snacky food on paper plates and slinging it around the table.

Peppermint Patty is disgusted, and tears into Charlie Brown for inviting them to such a goofy meal. He leaves, sad and humiliated. Marcie upbraids Peppermint Patty, pointing out that she invited herself, and Marcie and Franklin as well. Properly chastened, Patty asks if Marcie will go and apologize to Charlie Brown for her; she’s too rough and ‘brusque’. As Marcie leaves on her mission, Linus notes that this is not unlike the Pilgrim story of ‘The Courtship of Miles Standish’. Peppermint Party glares. ‘This isn't like that one at all.’

Marcie goes in and apologizes for Peppermint Patty’s outburst. Charlie Brown says that’s not what’s bothering him so much as his failure to provide them with a proper meal. Suddenly the clock chimes, and he remembers that they should be heading out to his Grandma’s soon. He calls her to explain why they might be late, and she invites all his friends to come over for Thanksgiving with her. She has all the proper holiday dishes aplenty.

The gang cheers and bundles into the back of the station wagon where they happily sing “Over the River and Through the Woods, To Grandmother’s House We Go”. Charlie Brown pauses. The only problem with that is ‘My grandmother lives in a condominium.’ (I remember at the time my inexperience made me rather puzzled at the word.)

Left alone, Snoopy and Woodstock go to the doghouse and pull out a complete traditional Thanksgiving feast, which they have had all the time. After Woodstock indulges in a little ‘bird cannibalism’, they break the wishbone together, the force of which sends the triumphant Woodstock sailing through the air, holding the winning half.

I think this might have been the first time Woodstock was featured in a Peanuts animated special. He had been growing in popularity; here he even merited his own song by Vince Guaraldi, “Hey Little Birdie”. His ‘sounds’, and Snoopy’s, were provided by Bill Melendez, the main animator and producer of the Peanuts specials until his death in 2008. Peppermint Patty was voiced by a boy, Christopher DeFaria, who grew up to be a man with quite a career in TV and animation.

There has been controversy of late over the ‘segregation’ of Franklin at the meal, despite Schulz’s efforts at integration of his comic strip in 1968, just months after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. This was in the face of threatened racist boycotts and possible loss of income in the South. I think you might as well say the show was prejudiced against Christians (Linus) or possibly-proto-lesbians (Marcie) because they are sitting by themselves, too.

Bill Melendez was a little shocked and wary of Woodstock’s avian cannibalism, too. Although there are birds (raptors) who habitually eat birds themselves, Woodstock doesn’t look much like a falcon.

My DVD copy. Includes The Mayflower Voyagers segment from This is America, Charlie Brown.