... more than 50% of the televisions in this country were tuned in to a single half-hour program that changed the way subsequent generations of Americans would view Christmas.
Do you know what that program was?
This was a far different time in America than the one we know now. It was still acceptable to refer to this particular day on the calendar as Christ's Nativity Mass, the eighteen-century old tradition of celebrating the birth of Jesus in a tiny village in modern day Palestine... Christmas, rather than referring to it as a "holiday" or the "festive season" or "yule tide". God's name and references to His Divine Word were not anathema to society at large, and neither was the spirit that the Word Incarnate brought to this earth. Santa ruled the day then, as he does now... but Santa was simply doing the Lord's work, he wasn't stealing the stage and replacing Him. None the less, the "Big Three" media outlets in television at the time rarely allowed commercial programing to delve too deeply into the traditional Christian dogma of the Birth of God as Man.
But in December of 1965, they made an exception...
The show was made on a shoe-string budget, without even the money to hire real actors... they had to use children that were so young and so inexperienced that they had to be prompted in their lines each and every time. The editing was choppy, and the graphics employed in the production were simple and archaic even by 1965 standards. The network officials and Coca Cola (the sole sponsor) were dismayed when they saw the preview showing, convinced it would "bomb" spectacularly and all money invested was wasted. When pressed to re-edit the program, the author and creator of the program defiantly refused to budge... not one second of the program would be altered from its finished state. With no time to reschedule, the network was forced to allow it to air.
This single, badly-edited program had the highest ratings of any broadcast prime-time program for the next 35 years, and in the subsequent 42 years of regular seasonal airing, has netted the creator, sponsors and the holder of the broadcast rights nearly $550,000,000 revenue, breaking all the records and setting new marks each and every year. It spawned no fewer than 7 sequels, two feature length movies and two Saturday morning cartoons.
More importantly, it set a precedent that remains to this day as nearly sacred and untouchable, and while the program never intended to accomplish all this, it remains the ONLY regularly aired program that quotes one of the most fundamental tenants of the Christian faith... that on Christmas Day, Christ was born in the town of Bethlehem.
Do you know what that show was yet?
"A Charlie Brown Christmas" by Charles M. Schultz.
Because this is the LAST vestige of an age when it was perfectly okay to say the Name of Christ on national broadcast television, I purchased this DVD for my children... so that they will know the thrill that I knew as a child, and still know as an adult, when we listen to Linus Van Pelt explain the REAL meaning of Christmas to the other colorful and much-loved characters from the Sunday comics...
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."
Gospel According to St Luke, 2:8-14
Merry Christmas!
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1 comment:
I enjoyed that post very much and had no idea that program, which I've seen as a right of youthful passage countless times, had that much impact.
FR
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