Nick requesting a long list of merch or, failing that, the gift of cold hard cash.) According to Jean, though, her husband wasn’t looking to make a point by leaving Santa Claus at the North Pole. (Although Charlie Brown’s sister Sally does dictate a letter to jolly old St. Working with a commercial giant like Coca-Cola would seem to cut against the cartoonist’s feelings about encroaching Christmastime commercialism, which may explain why Santa’s image is nowhere to be seen in A Charlie Brown Christmas. Interestingly, the main advertiser that Mendelson recruited for the Christmas special was The Coca-Cola Company, which famously popularized the image of Santa Claus that endures today in movies, TV shows and commercials.
I always felt it was a lovely collaboration, and the collaboration lasted a very long time.”
Bill would be the one to know how to liven it up and make it funny, and then Lee was the businessman who had to talk to the television stations and the advertisers. “They let Sparky lead: He came up with the idea of Lucy only wanting money, and Charlie Brown being depressed because he can’t get into the Christmas spirit. “It was Sparky who started out saying, ‘This is the story,’” Jean says of the trio’s creative process. But he had to sell that idea to his collaborators, including Mendelson and director Bill Melendez. When Schulz sat down to outline A Charlie Brown Christmas, one of the thematic points at the forefront of his mind was the increasingly commercial nature of the holiday season.
(Photo: United Features Syndicate/Courtesy Everett Collection) Charlie Brown and Linus wrestle with the meaning of Christmas in A Charlie Brown Christmas.