A special many of us have likely seen many times already, “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” tells the tale of poor little Charlie Brown’s efforts to provide a Thanksgiving dinner for a gaggle of acquaintances who invite themselves over. This 1973 special features a suddenly butch Peppermit Patty, who is almost unrecognizable when compared to her depiction only a year prior in “Snoopy Come Home,” along with a handful of other kids who seem to be fairly new to the series. Something about it has that distinctive ’70s touch seen in Schoolhouse Rock and the like, which isn’t my taste but which does have a certain kind of nostalgic charm, especially around the holidays.
Nobody likes it when a bunch of friends invite themselves over, but Charlie’s got the additional problem of not being able to cook anything besides cereal and toast. Snoopy et al. help out and a veritable feast of toast, cereal, popcorn, and what appears to be jelly beans is served at a large table that has been set up in a field somewhere. Peppermint Patty complains loudly about the quality of the dinner before Charlie realizes that he should have been at his grandmother’s place by now. He rings Grandma up and relays the situation, and the special ends with all of the kids being invited to Grandma’s house for a real Thanksgiving dinner.
Now, not that it’s in any way unique to the Peanuts universe, but where the hell are the parents for all this? They’re not bustling about the kitchen while the child and his dog attempt to cook, they’re not wondering why their children have vanished on a holiday, they don’t call Charlie in to the house when it’s time to go to grandma’s — one has to wonder whether they’re even driving the station wagon in the final scene of the show, or whether Snoopy or someone is at the helm. With the exception of Charlie’s grandmother, no relative appears even in “wah-WAH-wah-wah” form.
One wonders whether the parents are protesting the imperialist-consumerist Thanksgiving holiday and refusing to indulge Grandma’s traditionalism; or perhaps they’re lounging among naked hippies in a drug-addled haze, too out of it to even realize their children are missing — this is, after all, the seventies. The children do what they can to enjoy the holiday, but ultimately they’re either too young or too poorly brought up to be able to achieve much, and Grandma, that beacon of pre-post-modernism, must save the day.
I sincerely doubt that a Charlie Brown special deliberately included such a damning message, but it is fun to view it in this way, and I like to wonder whether Charles Schulz did feel at odds with, well, all the things I hate about boomerism: the destruction of tradition, identity politics, self-righteousness, revisionism, etc. Perhaps I’ve just been reading too much Evelyn Waugh.
