Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tales

Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales is the 41st prime-time animated TV special based on characters from the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. It originally aired on ABC December 8, 2002. It was thereafter broadcast each Christmas season after that through to 2019 as a companion segment in an hour-long slot featuring an unedited version of A Charlie Brown Christmas. The special consists of five vignettes, each one starring a different member of the Peanuts gang in various Christmastime situations, largely inspired by original Peanuts comic strips. The installments are as follows: Happy Holidays from Snoopy Yuletide Greetings from Linus Season's Greetings from Sally Peace on Earth from Lucy Merry Christmas from Charlie Brown When A Charlie Brown Christmas was created in 1965, the program was designed as a 30-minute time program. By the 1990s, changes in the delivery of closing credits and increases in advertising minutes on the networks made it impossible for all of A Charlie Brown Christmas to be aired in a half-hour time slot. In 2010, the special ran, with commercials, for 35 minutes. CBS made several cuts to A Charlie Brown Christmas to keep it in the half-hour time slot, including standardizing the closing credits and cutting out the closing song of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing". Fans of the special were angered by the cuts. In response, when ABC acquired the rights to the special shortly before creator Charles Schulz's death, it gave the special a full hour slot, leaving 18 minutes of airtime to fill. During 2001, the first year ABC aired A Charlie Brown Christmas, the show was followed by a retrospective hosted by Whoopi Goldberg featuring the voice cast and producers of the special. Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales was created to replace that retrospective in rounding out the hour for subsequent airings. It first aired December 8, 2002, and aired annually on ABC through 2019. From 2010 to 2012, a portion of the special was cut to clear a spot for Prep & Landing: Operation: Secret Santa, a seven-minute short produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Only "Happy Holidays from Snoopy," "Yuletide Greetings from Linus," and "Merry Christmas from Charlie Brown" aired in these years, though the special has again been shown in its entirety since 2013.