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60 years after its release,A Charlie Brown Christmasis now an iconic part of many families' Christmas celebrations — but producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez originally worried that they "killed Peanuts" with the idiosyncratic special they made.
Jason Mendelson, Lee's son, tells PEOPLE exclusively that his father,who died on Christmas Day 2019 at age 86, agreed to makeA Charlie Brown Christmasfor CBS before he, Melendez orPeanutscreator Charles Schulzhad any idea what it would be. The men had all previously worked together on the never-aired documentaryA Boy Named Charlie Brown.
Lee called Schulz, who all his friends called Sparky, and told him he'd soldA Charlie Brown Christmas. "And Sparky said, 'What's that?' " Jason, 47, says. "And my father said, 'Something you and Bill and I have to write this weekend.' "
They relied on all the same things that had madeA Boy Named Charlie Brown, includingthe music of jazz musician Vince Guaraldiand using children's voices for the characters.
"It was absolutely imperative for both Sparky Schulz and for my father that these be children, that it be authentic, that it be real," Jason says about their attitude toward all the Charlie Brown specials. "InA Charlie Brown Christmas, which was the first special, the story is about children going through emotional, confusing, deep times." Charlie Brown begins the show saying that, despite the joy he's "supposed" to feel, he always ends up "depressed" at the holiday
Some might have judged it too much for a kids show "That's why this show is so enduring," Jason says. "It's what we all feel. We all don't feel the way we think we're supposed to feel, and what do we do with those feelings?" If the special had shied away from those things, it would have lost "that innocence and that truth that I think that Sparky required. He demanded it," Jason says. The special's relatively simple story sees Charlie Brown struggle with his feelings as he tries to direct his friends in a Christmas pageant.
"And the thing, is all of those decisions, the decision to use the child's voices, to use the jazz music, to not have a laugh track, to have the show be very serious and very thoughtful? Lee and Bill thought they may have killedPeanuts," Jason says.
When they were done with the special, they sent it to the network and didn't get "great" feedback. "And they were concerned, 'Maybe we hurt our good new friend Sparky Schulz, and we've ruined this,' " Jason says.
But when they told Schulz their worries, he brushed them off and told them, "It's great. Don't worry. I know what this is. This is what I want it to be. It's great."
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Jason says his father often told him that the network would dejectedly tell him after watching a special, "It's too late to do anything about this. We've got to put this thing on the air. We don't really understand what this is going to be."
But "the opposite" was, of course, true, becauseA Charlie Brown Christmaswas a success at the time and continued to do well every year since.
As for why the special has resonated over the decades, Jason admits he's "incredibly biased" but he thinks the special managed to be "one of the perfect amalgamations of philosophy of Charles Schulz, of a simple animation everybody can relate to from Bill Melendez, of a production value that my father put together on a shoestring in a few months, and then the music of Vince Guaraldi, which is now ubiquitous with the holiday."
Jason grew up taking part in his dad'sPeanutswork; he voiced multiple characters, including Rerun Van Pelt and Peppermint Patty. Still, he didn't realize what a big deal his father's legacy — including the yearly viewings ofA Charlie Brown Christmas— was until he was older. As an adult, he's served as a producer on differentPeanutsprojects. This year, he's helped releasenew collectible vinylsof Guaraldi'sA Charlie Brown Christmassoundtrack.
Now, Jason and his brother Sean are grateful to carry on their dad's work. "When I go and do record signings, or we go and do events at Comic Con, and you realize how much this moved people, how important it is to their lives? Only many years into my life did I realize how important that was to other people and made me feel even more important to steward and protect whatever is there from that legacy," he says.
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