History Trivia / ACharlieBrownChristmas

* ChannelHop: After airing on Creator/{{CBS}} for 36 straight years, ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' moved to Creator/{{ABC}} in 2001. In 2020 Creator/AppleTVPlus purchased the exclusive rights for this special as well as ''WesternAnimation/ItsTheGreatPumpkinCharlieBrown'' and ''WesternAnimation/ACharlieBrownThanksgiving''. However, all three specials have been made available for free viewing for limited time windows around the relevant holidays, and a deal was struck for the specials to air on Creator/{{PBS}} and Creator/PBSKids as well until 2022. (''It's the Great Pumpkin'' didn't air on PBS until 2021 because the deal with Apple was made too late in the previous year to air it then.)

* ChildrenVoicingChildren: At the instigation of Charles Schulz (continuing the precedent set by Creator/BillMelendez's animated Ford commercials and intros for Music/TennesseeErnieFord's variety show featuring the characters), and boy, was it a hassle for the crew! Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins), Linus (Christopher Shea) and Lucy (Tracy Stratford) were all voiced by Hollywood-based child actors, but the majority of the others were non-professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area recruited by Lee Mendelson (including some neighbors and children of his acquaintances), and they needed extensive coaching from Bill Melendez on their line readings. In the case of 6-year-old Cathy Steinberg, who voiced Sally, she didn't know how to read and needed to have lines fed to her phonetically (leading to the "All I want is my fair share" flub mentioned above). It's even been suggested that you can hear traces of the Mexican accent of Bill Melendez in the way certain lines are said, in imitation of his coaching (particularly Linus saying "those are good reasons!").

* ChildrenVoicingChildren: At the instigation of Charles Schulz (continuing the precedent set by Creator/BillMelendez's animated Ford commercials and intros for Music/TennesseeErnieFord's variety show featuring the characters), and boy, was it a hassle for the crew! Charlie Brown (Peter Robbins), Linus (Christopher Shea) and Lucy (Tracy Stratford) were all voiced by Hollywood-based child actors, but the majority of the others were non-professionals from the San Francisco Bay Area recruited by Lee Mendelson (including some neighbors and children of his acquaintances), and they needed extensive coaching from Bill Melendez on their line readings. In the case of 4-year-old Cathy Steinberg, who voiced Sally, she didn't know how to read and needed to have lines fed to her phonetically (leading to the "All I want is my fair share" flub mentioned above). It's even been suggested that you can hear traces of the Mexican accent of Bill Melendez in the way certain lines are said, in imitation of his coaching (particularly Linus saying "those are good reasons!").

** Starting in 2015, Charlie Brown, Linus, and Lucy's voice actors are listed in the credits. Prior to this, [[NowWhichOneWasThatVoice the voice actors were all uncredited]].

* NetworkToTheRescue: CBS made some cuts to the special in the '90s because shows made more room for commercials by then (see EditedForSyndication above). When ABC acquired the rights in 2001, they blocked out a full hour for the special so that it could run uncut[[note]] (aside from the aforementioned Coca-Cola references)[[/note]], commissioning ''Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales'' to fill the extra time. Note that ABC also aired a cut version during the season, but there was always at least one full-length airing.

* PermanentPlaceholder: Director Bill Melendez was originally a placeholder for Snoopy’s voice, but they couldn’t find anything better so he was left in. Since then, Melendez consistently voiced Snoopy until his 2008 death.

* TheRedStapler: The special almost single-handedly ''destroyed'' the market for aluminum Christmas trees so completely that later generations have to be reminded that such a ludicrous thing actually ''existed'', let alone that it was socially acceptable to own one. That's the reason they're even a trope; tacky metal Christmas trees vanished from American culture overnight so thoroughly that many younger viewers thought they were something [[RealityIsUnrealistic Charles Schulz had made up.]]

* ThrowItIn: Since the special ran on limited production time, the crew did this to a lot of the kids' lines. One notable example is Lucy misidentifying "ailurophasia" as the fear of cats instead of "ailurophobia".

* {{Blooper}}: Given the insistence by Schulz and Mendelson on using actual children to play the ''Peanuts'' characters (and children doing voice acting for animation wasn't really a thing in 1965), it's no surprise some lines were flubbed:

* TheRedStapler: The special almost single-handedly ''destroyed'' the market for AluminumChristmasTrees so completely that later generations have to be reminded that such a ludicrous thing actually ''existed'', let alone that it was socially acceptable to own one. That's the reason they're even a trope; tacky metal Christmas trees vanished from American culture overnight so thoroughly that many younger viewers thought they were something [[RealityIsUnrealistic Charles Schulz had made up.]]

* TrendKiller: Aluminum Christmas trees were a popular trend in the late-'50s/early-'60s, but their depiction here as a symbol of soulless holiday commercialism is credited with killing their popularity so completely that later generations have to be reminded that such a ludicrous thing actually ''existed'', let alone that it was socially acceptable to own one. It even inspired [[AluminumChristmasTrees a trope on this site]], which defines something that sounds fictional, but actually isn't.

** The show was often paired with the much shorter ''Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales'' so that it could be shown intact and allowed to run over time. Now no longer relevant with the move to Creator/AppleTVPlus.

** "Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales" seems to fit the idea of what CBS expected. So in a way, ABC got what CBS originally paid for.

* PermanentPlaceholder: Director Bill Melendez was originally a placeholder for Snoopy’s voice, but they couldn’t find anything better so he was left in. Since then, Melendez had consistently voiced Snoopy until his 2008 death.

* PermanentPlaceholder: Bill Melendez was originally a placeholder for Snoopy’s voice, but they couldn’t find anything better so he was left in. He's voiced Snoopy ever since, to the point that they went back and resampled recordings of his voice work to create a Snoopy performance for ''WesternAnimation/ThePeanutsMovie''.

** The Scripture quotation that Linus recites to explain the meaning of Christmas.