49 Fun Facts About A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

On which network did A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving first air, on November 20, 1973?

It placed third in the Nielsen ratings that week, behind All in the Family and Sanford and Son.

Phil Roman, who co-directed A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, later directed which cartoon cat's TV specials?

Garfield got his first TV special, Here Comes Garfield, from Roman in 1982, and Roman then founded his own studio, Film Roman, which went on to animate The Simpsons.

Why does Peppermint Patty invite herself to Charlie Brown's for Thanksgiving?

Her father is out of town, so she phones Charlie Brown and invites herself over, then rings back to add more guests before he can explain that his family is going out for dinner.

Which candy does Snoopy serve at the makeshift feast in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

Jelly beans, dished up beside popcorn and pretzel sticks, are part of a spread so untraditional that Peppermint Patty demands to know what kind of Thanksgiving dinner it is.

What piece of games equipment does Snoopy drag outside for the guests to eat on?

A ping-pong table, which Snoopy sets up in the yard with chairs from the garage after Linus recruits him to help stage a dinner Charlie Brown never meant to host.

Which nickname does Peppermint Patty call Charlie Brown throughout A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

Chuck is what she calls him even in mid-tantrum, when she berates him over a holiday feast that he never offered to cook in the first place.

After Peppermint Patty rejects the meal, who reminds her that she invited herself in the first place?

Marcie asks whether Charlie Brown invited them or she invited herself, and a chastened Peppermint Patty sends her inside to patch things up before following to apologise in person.

Charlie Brown notes 'Over the River and Through the Wood' doesn't fit because his grandmother lives where?

In a condominium, he points out, as the whole gang rides to her dinner singing the old sleigh song; she had invited all his friends when he phoned to say the family was running late.

How does A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving end, once the guests have gone?

A turkey dinner for two: once everyone else has driven off, Snoopy and Woodstock cook the traditional meal that none of the guests got, then pull the wishbone between them.

How does the special open, before any Thanksgiving business?

Lucy pulls the football away after persuading Charlie Brown that kicking off is a great Thanksgiving tradition, then wonders aloud how some traditions just slowly fade away.

What award did A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving win in 1974?

An Emmy, awarded to Charles Schulz himself; accepting an earlier one, for the Christmas special, he had joked that Charlie Brown was not used to winning.

Which signature Peanuts piano tune returns with a funkier beat in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

Linus and Lucy gets its funkiest outing here because the composer hired younger players for the score, among them drummer Mike Clark, soon to join Herbie Hancock's Headhunters.

Who provided the voices of both Snoopy and Woodstock?

Bill Melendez, who also directed the special, recited gibberish into a tape recorder and sped it up, because Schulz would not allow his dog to speak English.

Which jazz pianist composed the music for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

Vince Guaraldi scored it with a funk-minded quintet and, unusually, stepped up to the microphone himself: his is the voice singing 'Little Birdie'.

What did A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving finally get in 2023, fifty years after it first aired?

A full soundtrack album arrived only in 2023: for half a century the score could be heard just by watching the special, apart from a few cues scattered across compilations.

'The Mayflower Voyagers', ABC's long-time companion to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, opened which Peanuts miniseries?

This Is America, Charlie Brown sent the Peanuts kids through US history in 1988 and did what Peanuts animation rarely does, showing adults, George Washington among them, in full view.

Which streaming service acquired exclusive rights to the special in 2020?

Apple TV+ put the Peanuts specials behind a paywall but promised free viewing windows: in 2020 anyone could stream this one for three days in Thanksgiving week.

In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Peppermint Patty wonders why she can't 'act right' away from which sport?

Baseball is her home turf: in her very first strips she joined Charlie Brown's team as its new pitcher, pushed him out to the outfield, then quit in disgust.

When did A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving traditionally air in Canada?

Early October, because Canada's Thanksgiving falls on the second Monday of that month, about six weeks before the American holiday.

What was unusual about Peppermint Patty's voice in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

A boy performed it: Christopher DeFaria voiced the tomboy in several specials, then grew up to be a Hollywood producer whose films include Ready Player One.

What is Peppermint Patty's rarely used full name?

Patricia Reichardt surfaced only in January 1972, more than five years after her debut, in a storyline where she fights her school's dress code with Snoopy as her attorney.

What does Peppermint Patty almost always wear on her feet in Peanuts?

Sandals matter to her: when her school forbids them, it emerges that they were a gift from her father, who calls her his 'rare gem'.

Peppermint Patty's bespectacled best friend habitually addresses her how?

'Sir' was the first thing her friend ever called her in the strip; Peppermint Patty kept telling her to stop, then gave up and grew used to it.

Franklin, introduced in July 1968, was the first what in Peanuts?

The strip's first Black character arrived after Los Angeles schoolteacher Harriet Glickman wrote to Schulz, eleven days after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, urging him to add one.

Where did Franklin first meet Charlie Brown in the strip?

At the beach, Franklin tells Charlie Brown that his father is a soldier in Vietnam, helps him build a sandcastle and is invited to come and visit.

In the classic Peanuts TV specials, which instrument stands in for the voices of adults?

A trombone with a mute in its bell speaks for teachers and parents, the specials' way of copying the strip, where adult talk is shown only from the children's side.

Woodstock is named after what?

The 1969 music festival was still in the news when Schulz, after more than three years of drawing Snoopy's little bird friend without a name, decided he needed one and simply borrowed it.

What breed of dog is Snoopy?

Beagle, though his look came from Spike, Schulz's childhood hunting dog, whose appetite for pins and tacks won the teenage artist a spot in Ripley's Believe It or Not in 1937.

When Snoopy battles the Red Baron as the World War I Flying Ace, what serves as his Sopwith Camel?

His doghouse has been his fighter plane since October 1965, and for all his swagger the ace never wins: the Red Baron shoots him down again and again.

What job does Charlie Brown's father have, the same one Charles Schulz's own father held?

A barber, like Carl Schulz, who cut hair in St. Paul; after the war his son moved into the apartment over the barbershop and set about becoming a cartoonist.

Many sing 'to grandmother's house we go', but whose house did Lydia Maria Child's poem name?

Grandfather's: the poet, better known in her day as an anti-slavery writer, was remembering childhood trips to her own grandfather's house.

Who took over drawing Peanuts when Charles Schulz retired?

Nobody, at his family's wish: he announced his retirement in December 1999, and the last new strip ran on February 13, 2000, hours after he died.

How did Charles Schulz feel about the title 'Peanuts', which his syndicate chose?

He hated it lifelong: decades on he was still calling the title 'totally ridiculous' and saying it had 'no dignity', which he felt his humour did have.

Charles Schulz went through life with which nickname, taken from Spark Plug, a racehorse in the comic strip Barney Google?

Sparky stuck from two days after his birth, when an uncle named him after the horse, and a drawing he had published as a teenager was credited 'Drawn by Sparky'.

Lee Mendelson won Schulz's trust with a 1963 documentary about which San Francisco Giants star?

Willie Mays was the subject of A Man Named Mays; having filmed the game's greatest player, Mendelson reasoned, he should now film its worst, Charlie Brown, and he rang Schulz.

Lee Mendelson hired the Peanuts composer after hearing his hit 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind' while crossing which bridge?

The Golden Gate Bridge crossing sent him looking for the pianist, who soon phoned back, too excited to wait for a meeting, and played a brand-new tune down the line.

Which famous opening line is Snoopy's favourite way to start a novel?

It was a dark and stormy night comes from Edward Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford, an opening so overripe that it inspired a contest to write the worst first sentence.

Lucy's five-cent booth in Peanuts offers which service?

Psychiatric help, in a send-up of the childhood lemonade stand: a sign says whether 'The Doctor Is' in or out, and the advice a nickel buys is almost always useless.

What was Peanuts called before its syndicate renamed it?

Li'l Folks had run weekly in Charles Schulz's hometown paper for about three years, but the name was too close to an older strip, Little Folks, so the syndicate chose a new one.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving was the third Peanuts holiday special; which holiday did the second one, in 1966, celebrate?

Halloween: in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown the title character collects nothing but rocks while trick-or-treating, and sympathetic viewers answered by posting candy to Schulz and the studio.

In Peanuts, what does Sally Brown call Linus, the unwilling object of her crush?

My Sweet Babboo is her name for him whether he likes it or not, and he does not: he usually shouts her down or hides from her under his blanket.

What is the only thing Charlie Brown says he might be able to cook in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

Toast, and even that is a maybe: 'cold cereal and maybe toast' is all he claims he can make, yet he ends up catering for three guests he never invited.

What does Snoopy wear to serve the meal in A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving?

A chef's hat, and he ducks his head inside it when Peppermint Patty looks at her plate and demands to know what blockhead cooked all this.

In 2020, the special's new streaming owner agreed to share it with which broadcast network?

PBS, the public broadcaster, showed it without ads on the Sunday before Thanksgiving in 2020 and again in 2021; then the deal lapsed, and the special left broadcast television.

How did Charlie Brown take revenge on the Kite-Eating Tree in Peanuts?

Bit it, in a 1977 storyline, and then he ran away from home after a letter of complaint arrived from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Which alter ego does Snoopy become by putting on sunglasses?

Joe Cool takes nothing more than a pair of sunglasses and a wall to lean against: that is all Snoopy needs to pass himself off as a college student.

Along with The Disney Channel, which network re-aired the special in the 1990s?

Nickelodeon bundled the old specials with a short-lived Saturday-morning Peanuts series under the banner 'You're on Nickelodeon, Charlie Brown', because the series alone had too few episodes to fill a slot.

Which composer does Schroeder idolise in Peanuts, hunched over his toy piano?

Beethoven is his hero, yet the boy pianist sits out A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving altogether: he is never seen, heard or even mentioned in it.

Peppermint Patty sending a friend to apologise for her echoes which Longfellow poem, as Linus points out?

The Courtship of Miles Standish has the captain send his friend John Alden to woo Priscilla Mullins for him, and the plan backfires: in the legend she marries the messenger.