Televised Christmas specials are as integral to the celebration of the season as trees, ornaments, and presents; and yet the Christmas special as we know it didn’t become a TV staple until the 1960s, when many of the genre’s perennial favorites were originally produced. And some once-popular subgenres of the special—like the variety show, the newspaper-comic-strip adaptation, and the cheesy Christmas versions of cheap-o Saturday morning cartoons—have either fallen by the wayside or have been reduced to post-modern irony-fuel in recent years. Simply put: There’s more to the history of the TV Christmas special than just The Island Of Misfit Toys and The Gospel according to Peanuts. And thanks to basic cable, video stores, and streaming video services, there’s almost no aspect of Yuletide nostalgia that we can’t revisit. TV Christmas Specials 101Peanuts comic strip, A Charlie Brown Christmas has been a fixture of the Christmas programming schedule since 1965—though it gave executives at the network that originally aired the special a serious case of seasonal anxiety. Schulz and director Bill Melendez famously fought the brass at CBS to keep the special’s key scene, where security blanket-toting Peanuts sage Linus recites a passage from The Gospel Of Luke, a move… Read full this story
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