A Charlie Brown Christmas

Charlie Brown is unhappy with the way everyone around him has turned Christmas into an exercise in buying and decorating. Hoping to pull him out of his gloom, Lucy suggests he direct the school's Christmas pageant. The job brings him little but frustration, and when he tries to restore the occasion's proper spirit with a small, scraggly fir tree, the other children only laugh at him. Linus then explains what the holiday is really about.

The 1965 television special was the first Peanuts animation and the first film Bill Melendez directed, followed by further Peanuts specials and features such as It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Charles M. Schulz wrote the screenplay, Melendez produced, and the voices include Peter Robbins as Charlie Brown, Christopher Shea as Linus, Tracy Stratford as Lucy, Cathy Steinberg as Sally and Chris Doran as Schroeder. It runs 25 minutes.

On IMDb it holds 8.3 out of 10 from more than 41,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7.7 from a much smaller sample. The gap likely reflects the special's standing among viewers who seek it out rather than wider audiences.