The animated classic, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, is one of my all time favorite holiday shows.  This holiday special is based upon the world renowned comic strip Peanuts, by Charles M. Shulz. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is one of many animated TV specials from the Peanuts franchise that currently air in prime time slots during the holidays.

It originally aired back in 1973 on the CBS network and the following year it won an Emmy Award. After moving to ABC in the year 2000 the network traditionally aired the special on Thanksgiving night through 2005, but in 2006 it began to be aired on the night before Thanksgiving Day.

The special opens with the classic “should he or shouldn’t he” try to kick the football Lucy is holding.

Charlie Brown at first refuses, considering Lucy has always moved the ball at the last moment resulting in poor Charlie Brown landing flat on his back.

This time, Charlie Brown’s rationale is that Lucy would never pull the ball back on a Thanksgiving holiday… Not even Lucy would be that “prankish”, Right?  Yes she is and yes Charlie Brown falls for it (no pun intended) and we are off to a traditional holiday season spearheaded by the Peanut’s gang. An irony is that after the opening scene Lucy doesn’t appear in the rest of the episode.

The show is about Charlie Brown finding himself placed in a tough situation when Peppermint Patty literally invites herself, Marcie and a kid named Franklin over to the Brown’s for Thanksgiving dinner. The problem is that Charlie’s family is spending this year at their grandmother’s home. Being the goodhearted kid that he is, Charlie decides to cook a Thanksgiving dinner himself.  Actually, as you see in the show, Snoopy and Woodstock do all of the cooking and most of the preparations for the whimsical Thanksgiving Day meal that consists of toast, popcorn, pretzel and jelly beans.

As fate would have it, the outdoor dinner is a disaster and Charlie Brown feels defeated after all his efforts to make it right. In the end the spirit of giving saves the day as Charlie’s grandmother invites the whole gang over to have a real Thanksgiving dinner at her home.

From my childhood and continuing the tradition with my own two children and wife, watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving has remained the signature occasion to usher in the Christmas season … Happy Holidays Everyone!