For several reasons, this time of year is relished, particularly by youngsters. First, there’s Halloween. How incredible for a kid to walk up to any stranger’s house in the neighborhood and have their bag filled with candy for free. Second, shortly after that, is Christmas. For that, a different stranger, this one fat, jolly and with a white beard, comes to children’s homes with a bag filled with toys and leaves them – again, no charge.
There’s understandable excitement attached to both holidays. Every year these holidays are foreshadowed by two enduring productions - both are associated with one individual – Charles Schultz, the illustrator and creative genius behind the comic strip Peanuts.
The Peanuts strip debuted in 1950. In no time, other papers had taken notice. There was just something about the trials, simple events and successes/failures of the characters. Eventually, most every paper in the US and also overseas in 75 countries and 21 languages carried it. In all, over 2,600 papers ran the strip reaching hundreds of millions of readers....
By 1965, the Peanuts characters hinted the holidays had arrived when A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on television. It was a curiously controversial production because part of it showcased Linus reciting a religious passage from the New Testament of the bible. Thinking that might offend some people, television executives wanted that pulled. Nope. Schultz quietly stood his ground. The scene stayed. After 57 years, the cartoon is still an annual institution.
The show was so successful, a year later, in 1966, It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown followed on its heels. It too was a smash success and a signal to kids that Halloween was imminent.
Schultz was long known as one of the humblest of men. Born in Minneapolis in 1922, he was quietly smart. That was recognized early. He was promoted from third grade directly to fifth. As a result, he was smaller than his classmates making him self-conscious. He stayed to himself and enjoyed drawing. Years later, his first published sketch was in a newspaper feature about his eccentric pet dog. It’s said that became the inspiration for Snoopy.
In the 1940s, Schulz was drafted into the Army. After serving overseas he went back to school, this time as an art instructor. While there, he befriended a fellow teacher whose name happened to be Charlie Brown. The rest is history. Soon thereafter, he drew his first Peanuts cartoon.
By the late ‘60s, the lives of the Peanuts characters with lost loves, insecurities, and countless life-lessons had become nothing short of a phenomenon including a Broadway play, a line of greeting cards, feature films and a bird companion named Woodstock (after the huge 1969 rock music festival). Clearly, Schultz was quietly “hip.” In 1969, even NASA got on board when the Apollo 10 astronauts circled the moon in two spacecrafts named Charlie Brown and Snoopy.
In the end, Schultz penned over 18,000 comic strips until his death in 2000. It is still recognized as the most popular newspaper feature in history.
It’s frequently said you know you’ve “made it” when you appear on a postage stamp. If so, Schultz made it many times over with his characters appearing on stamps in multiple countries around the world. They have even shown up on commemorative coins from the British Virgin Islands and a five-ounce silver coin from the tiny South Pacific country of Niue.
Just in time for the 2022 holidays, the US Postal Service is releasing a new sheet of “Forever” stamps featuring eleven of Shultz’s characters. Included are Charlie Brown in his iconic zig-zag-striped shirt; antagonistic Lucy Van Pelt; brainy Franklin; Charlie Brown’s little sister Sally; Pigpen surrounded by the obligatory cloud of dust; Linus, Lucy’s sensitive younger brother; Snoopy with his bird companion, Woodstock; musical prodigy Schroeder; earthy Peppermint Patty wearing sandals; and Patty’s pragmatic friend Marcie.
In the center is a 1987 photograph of the cartoonist surrounded by his immortal characters.
By the way, word is out that, along with absolutely everything else, in January, the price of First-Class postage is rising fully five-percent from the current 60-cents to 63-cents. Worse, more such hikes are definitely on the horizon.
As, perhaps, an early Christmas present, until January, the new Peanuts stamps will still be available for 60-cents each and usable as First Class postage forever – no matter what rates are in the future. Cumulatively speaking, that’s not peanuts.
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