A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Ah, my favorite thing about this time of year — Charlie Brown animated specials and the holidays, with home runs on Hallowe’en; Thanksgiving; and Christmas. How some last-minute rough animation and some great jazz from the Vince Guaraldi Trio became the symbol of the holidays … I’ll never understand … but I love it!

The only thing I wish they’d include would be the Dolly Madison commercials from the ’70s that seemed as embedded in the fabric of the specials as the stories themselves. I remember sitting in our family room in Canada watching these specials and wondering by what special torture had I been ripped from America and deposited in a frozen wasteland called Canada … and watching these specials via Buffalo TV airwaves allowed me to connect briefly to the country where I felt at home, and for which it would take me the bulk of my adult life to return. Thank you Charles Schulz and Charlie Brown for keeping me connected to what I loved — an America of Apollo; Marx; and yes … Dolly Madison 🙂