That’s it!
Recovering Christmas with the Peanuts Crew
There’s a lot to unpack in Charles M. Schulz’s holiday masterpiece, A Charlie Brown Christmas, but I’m just going to focus on the small pieces that came to mind recently for a shorter post to start off a string of Christmas vibe essays.
Sometimes, pertinent lines from my favorite films just slide into my inner dialogue when they happen to serve as fitting script for what’s happening in my life, and last night it was the words that’s it! as shouted by Lucy van Pelt in a scene from this Peanuts classic.
Her request seems simple, and it’s not one Schroeder anticipates being so hard to fulfill. Lucy’s full song request, interspersed with musical chords by our guy Schroeder, whose valiant attempts are the stuff of Beethoven and Mozart, reads thus: “Hey, by the way, can you play "Jingle Bells"?... No, no. I mean "Jingle Bells" - You know, deck them halls and all that stuff…No, no. You don't get it at all. I mean "Jingle Bells". You know, Santa Claus and ho-ho-ho and mistletoe and presents to pretty girls.”
A bit gets lost in translation here, because Lucy doesn’t know how to vocalize what she’s asking for. She has this tune in her head of what Christmas sounds like, and her only known way to describe it clutches at the cliches and traditions with which she is most familiar. She wants Schroeder to put Christmas to music, and his interpretation of her language tells him she wants the most resounding, decked out version of the simple carol that he can manage. Only when he plays the simplest, single-note version of the tune - jabbing at the keys with one finger at that - does she yell, “That’s it!”
So what’s the point of this interlude? While Charlie Brown and Linus are off on their mission to find a tree, this is our one vision of what’s happening back on set before their return; and it functions well as a reflection of the fumbling efforts of all these characters to recover the Christmas spirit they once had and have since lost. They’re not that old, but old enough to have lost their inborn sense of wonder, connection and joy. We see this in Charlie Brown’s intense perennial depression most prominently, but it manifests in the other characters as well. Lucy is a control freak; Linus has codependency issues with a blanket; Frieda has an unhealthy fixation on her hair. The list goes on. Their issues stem from the same feeling of lacking, that something is missing and within their power to recover if they can only grasp at the right means of attaining that feeling. When Schroeder plays the jarring notes of Jingle Bells by pounding one key at a time, he intends to make Lucy realize the impossible nature of her request by cutting all the pomp of the versions he thinks she wants. He thinks she wants something bigger than he can play, and that’s perhaps what she thinks she wants too based on her description; but she really wants a song that recovers her first sense of the feeling of Christmas - the feeling of connection and simple joy. When she hears the simple version of Jingle Bells, she seems puzzled at first but then bursts into the wildly enthusiastic response we all know.
Lucy wants to recover Christmas, and expresses confusion when such a simple, unassuming tune channels that feeling. Similarly, in recovery, we know we want certain things in our lives: happiness, a feeling of fulfillment, connection with others, etc. But the sense of happiness and joy we experience doesn’t come in the same packaging we may once have imagined it would. I used to think I needed certain socially lauded items to feel truly happy with my life, but I’m finding that it’s a lot less glamorous than I imagined. I don’t have any of the wishlist items I once felt I needed, but I feel a sense of deep connection with others, genuine happiness in my blessings, and love for myself and others today that I know I didn’t have a year ago at this time.
The classic Charlie Brown tree is another representative of the simple solution that surprises Lucy. Charlie Brown has selected the tree with the least amount of commercialism, and it happens to be the smallest and least green of the trees as well. It basically all branch with a little pine. But that’s still a tree. A tree without its leaves is still a tree, and maybe even closer to its original state than it is with all its foliage. Charlie Brown’s tree, even though he doubts its value when he sees the reaction of his friends, is the tree representation of the Christmas spirit of connection that Lucy recovered when she listened to Schroeder’s song. When Charlie Brown cries out his famous line - “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” - Linus responds with a Bible reading of the Nativity scene without explaining his choice, but Charlie Brown seems to get it because he gathers up his rejected tree and brings it out on his own to decorate. He fails on his own, and it takes the whole group of them to make the tree look like the Christmas tree it becomes. The magic here isn’t so much the tree as it is the group of them uniting in their acceptance of the simple tree and contributing their attention in a group effort to love it and embrace their friend’s choice.
This is the Christmas spirit they’ve been needing to recover, and they’ve achieved it through acceptance and connection, putting aside all their personal issues (Linus even gives up his blanket to be a sort of tree stand) to celebrate the little tree. Through community, acceptance, and practicing gratitude for the tree given to them, the group achieves recovery of the feeling that has evaded them and their efforts to find it in their learned materialistic behaviors; they burst into song, again using music to express the feeling they can’t describe.
The film concludes with a visual display of their recovered connection, but we’re also left with the reminder that it’s a practice and a process to achieve and maintain this recovery. The Peanuts gang is standing out in the dark winter night, a reflection of the fact that recovery most often comes amidst the hardest times we’ve known. When Schroeder finally hits on that magic tune Lucy has been seeking, her outburst sends him flying in shock from the piano seat, thus ending the tune. Lucy grasps wildly at the thing she has recovered and loses it because she doesn’t know how to practice it yet even if she has the consciousness of mind to recognize it. Most of the gang struggles to perceive the value in the tree, but their love for Charlie Brown leads them to appreciate it and accept it as theirs. They will continue to struggle despite this brief span of celebration, but they have begun the practice of gratitude and acceptance that will continue to recover the feeling when they choose to put aside their self-centered tendencies and follow that niggling, true feeling that has led them to follow their friend and sing around his tree. The film presents this message of recovery in such a simple manner, placing a daunting task into simple things such as hearing a familiar tune in just the right way or realizing the beauty and potential in something we might have seen as ugly and unattractive through a different lens. We may not always be able to pinpoint exactly how or when we’ve recovered the lost connected feeling we’re always craving, but we know it when we have it. When we’re able to look at ourselves with love, to believe in a power greater than us maintaining some providential order in our lives that have seemed so chaotic and terrifying when we’re at the helm, or when we consider the people in our lives, even complete strangers or loved ones states away from us, and are able to see and appreciate the deep connection communing us with one another. That’s it.
