Peanuts Daily Strip September 11, 1962

For those of you who dream of finding a Peanuts comic strip original on which the animated television special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, was based, GOOD LUCK!!!!! Unlike the second (Charlie Brown's All-Stars) and third (It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown) T.V. specials, the first was really not based on particular Charles Schulz comic strips, at least not on Christmas themed strips. Most of the gags were adapted from strips that had nothing to do with Christmas. For example, when Lucy states that she never gets what she really wants for Christmas, Real Estate, the line came out of a strip involving Lucy's birthday. Moreover, the story line of A Charlie Brown Christmas does not come from a Peanuts comic strip continuity. Even Linus' famous speech about the meaning of Christmas did not appear in comic strip form until some months after the cartoon first aired in 1964.

I already had comic strip originals with story and even dialogue that were clearly re-used in the making of All-Stars and Great Pumpkin, but I never could find anything close to a Charlie Brown Christmas strip until this one came onto the market. I know, it has absolutely nothing to do with Chrstmas, but are you going to tell me that Charles Schulz didn't have this strip in mind when he was creating the poor little wooden tree in the cartoon? In any event, it's close enough in imagery and feel to what is seen in the classic, first Peanuts special for me to absolutely love this original. I also like the way that Schulz, in this strip, is especially successful in capturing the true naivete of younger children, which is a nice change from his more typical depiction of the Peanuts characters in somewhat more adult situations and using dialogue which is more sophisticated than what was used here.