It’s that time of year again – the period from late October
through late December where we go through Halloween, Thanksgiving, and
Christmas, complete with pumpkin picking and trick-or-treating, Butterball and
football, and decked halls and snowfalls. In terms of entertainment, we have
costumes, parades, and the Rockettes, along with numerous television specials
and holiday music releases. However, nothing captures the pop culture spirit of
the season like the Charlie Brown TV
specials. Good old Chuck, Linus and Lucy, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang epitomize the holidays like
no one else.
If you don’t have the time (or the stomach) to watch all the
holiday programming that will be overwhelming the airwaves over the next couple
of months, your best bets are the Charlie
Brown specials, including It’s the
Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown; A
Charlie Brown Thanksgiving; and A
Charlie Brown Christmas. These are all available on DVD, but there’s
something magical about watching them on network television during the season.
In terms of holiday music, you can’t do better than the
soundtracks to the Charlie Brown
specials. As enjoyable as holiday releases by major and independent artists can
be, they don’t compare to the beauty and innocence of the scores for the Peanuts specials. There are several
albums that cover the music of the Peanuts
shows, but I really recommend the actual soundtracks to the programs composed
and performed by Vince Gauraldi. Like the shows, his timeless Charlie Brown recordings exude the
peace, contentment, and happiness of the holidays.
--Raj Manoharan
No comments:
Post a Comment