Fifty-five years ago today “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was shown on television for the first time. I was only 6, but I remember watching it, as I have done every year since.
The message, so poignant today, seems extra powerful when I think that it had a place back in 1965. In that seemingly innocent era, Charlie Brown told Linus, “Maybe I just don’t get Christmas at all.”
Linus responds by going and standing alone on a stage. The lights are dimmed, and in that amazingly child-like voice he proclaims the words of Luke 2. “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown,” he states when he’s finished.
It really is that simple. It really is that basic. A woman had a child. The world changed. The world still changes, if only a tiny bit at a time, whenever we think of that story.