Things You Might Not Know About Charlie Brown
- First animated Peanuts special.
- When they first saw the show, CBS executives were horrified at the idea of an animated Christmas special with such a blatant message. They also strongly objected to the fact that the show had no "canned laughter".
- When viewing the rough cut of the show, both of the producers, Bill Melendez and Lee Mendelson, were convinced that they had a flop on their hands. After it premiered, they were happily surprised and shocked at the high ratings and excellent reviews that the show received.
- It's the second longest-running Christmas special on US network television, next to the 1964 special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer which premiered one year earlier and is still broadcast every year.
- The actors, who were all children, learned their lines phonetically, often not knowing what they meant, which led to the now familiar Peanuts delivery-style.
- It won an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Children's Program", and a Peabody Award for excellence in programming.
- During his famed speech, Linus, who is well known to be dependent on his "Security Blanket", actually lets go of it when he recites these words: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy" which is from Luke 2:10.
- The show broke many of the rules prevalent for animated holiday specials during the 1960s: it didn't make use of a laugh track; real children were used for the character voices instead of adult actors imitating children's voices; and Biblical references were used to illustrate the true meaning of Christmas.
- Bill Melendez tried to talk Charles Schulz out of using Biblical references, especially Linus's speech. Schulz reportedly won him over by saying, "If we don't do it, who will?"
- Just before her remarks about Christmas being a big commercial racket, Lucy refers to Charlie Brown simply as "Charlie". This is the only time she does this in any of the TV specials; every other time it's "Charlie Brown".
