A Charlie Brown Christmas is the perfect film for anyone who has ever felt alone, melancholy or ambivalent around Christmas. We usually think of these as sentiments that are specific to adults, feelings that crystallise the sensation that childhood as ed, and yet the beauty of the Charlie Brown special is to show that these sadnesses can also exist when we are children and in many cases stem from things that are unresolved or unexpressed about our own childhoods – affects that rise to the surface amidst the cultural optimism around Christmas. As in Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip, the children here are almost proto-neurotic adults, but not quite; they never feel drawn in bad faith, or as mere ciphers for Charlie’s disillusionment. There is whimsy and sadness side by side, as Charlie struggles to figure out why he can’t feel happiness, especially at Christmas, and Lucy suggests that he might have panphobia, “a fear of everything.” To be an adult in an existential world is to be a child again, the film suggests.

At the same time, A Charlie Brown Christmas reminds me of A Christmas Story in its gently melancholy sense that Christmas is becoming a commodity. Lucy says she never gets what she wants for Christmas (“real estate”), Snoopy is entering a Christmas lights competition for cash and Charlie’s sister wants cash in “tens and twenties…it’s what’s coming to me.” It all pivots aroud Charlie’s decision to get a “real” wooden Christmas tree instead of a metallic tree, despite him wondering: “Do they still make wooden Christmas trees? That doesn’t seem to fit the modern spirit.” Ironically, the episode single-handedly ruined the market for metallic trees and created a new demand for “natural” trees. None of this satire is superior or snarky – it exudes a soft sadness, a deep sense of what it means to turn from a child into an adult.

Yet the beauty of A Charlie Brown Christmas is that it leaves something of the optimism of children in play too. Charlie is inspired by a star he sees in the sky on his way home from his botched play and vows: “I won’t let all this commercialisation ruin my Christmas – I’ll take this Christmas tree home and decorate it!” Even the most cynical of his crew help him out by taking the decorations from Snoopy’s display and using them for his tree, opting for community over profit. And of course, alongside all that, the animation is beautiful – tremulous in both its joy and melancholy, it captures the sensation of being a child who is gradually coming to awareness of adulthood but hasn’t got there yet, a child with just a couple more truly innocent Christmases in them, even when they feel low, or seem to see through it. In the breadth and depth of its 25 minutes, it may just be the greatest Christmas film ever.

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