EPISODE 942: A LESSON IN HOLIDAY ANXIETY MANAGEMENT FROM CHARLIE BROWN

Little Birdie, Why Do You Fly Upside Down?

Earlier this week I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for the first time in forever. It’s one of those holiday specials that I think gets mentioned more than it ever gets watched. Some of that has to do with the nature of what it’s commemorating. Thanksgiving is one day. Christmas is a whole season. The window for watching it is pretty limited.

But I was a little surprised to find that next to classics like A Charlie Brown Christmas or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving also doesn’t hold up so well. Its story is a little thin—Charlie Brown is forced to whip up a Thanksgiving meal after Peppermint Patty invites herself and others over—and its resolution without any real drama: Snoopy just takes care of everything. Really, other than Peppermint Patty, Charlie Brown and Marcie, the kids play almost no role in the cartoon at all. Lucy only appears in the first three minutes, which is crazy!

The special also reaches for a spiritual moment like A Charlie Brown Christmas, complete with Linus saying a prayer and offering a little sermon. But it’s all a little bit been there and ho-hum. Rather than a real story, the special, which was the 10^th in the series of Charlie Brown specials and the first where the material was not drawn from the comic strip itself, plays out like a loose set of sketches inspired by different elements of the holiday—football, set up, cooking, guests.

Amongst them is this great vignette, which includes the amazing lyric, “Little bird, why do you fly upside down?”

But even if the special doesn’t really follow through on it, it’s hard not to relate to Charlie Brown’s generalized anxiety in the special. “I think I’m losing control of the whole world,” he says after Peppermint Patty calls a third time, having invited yet another guest.

It’s such a holiday experience to feel overwhelmed at some point. And the genius of Charles Schulz, really, was not to avoid these more complex and difficult moments of life, but rather to allow them to be expressed in ways that took some of the bite out of them. Charlie Brown and his friends become mirrors, in a way. Seeing our fears and anxieties through them, we see ourselves and our situation differently. We’re all just awkward, insecure, hilarious kids, and everything’s okay.

I wonder what would happen this Thanksgiving during any high-stress moments if we step back and imagine ourselves and everyone else we’re with as at the Peanuts Thanksgiving. It won’t change what people are saying or doing, but maybe it can change how we’re affected. Maybe instead of getting triggered we’ll simply think, You’re such a Lucy.

Near the end of the Thanksgiving special, all of the kids pile into the backseat of Charlie’s parents’ car. They’re off to his grandmother’s house. And then we cut back to Snoopy and Woodstock, who set up their own Thanksgiving feast. And having been pretty ordinary up until now, suddenly the watercolor background is suffused with the most gorgeous shades of pink and purple. The challenges of the day finally over, they can just sit and eat on this beautiful evening, while Vince Guaraldi’s mellow jazz plays.

May it be the same for you.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

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