OPINION

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Linus told us what Christmas is all about

BY JD HAYWORTH Tribune Columnist

You can’t say you weren’t warned. A year ago in this space, as the glad tidings were reported that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” was airing again on national television for the 56th straight year, there also came a warning that the Peabody Award-winning “Peanuts” special might not be seen for a 57th consecutive Yuletide broadcast on conventional “over-the-air” TV.

Sadly, that has come to pass.

In their beneficence, the fine folks at Apple TV+ say instead that their platform will provide a “free window” for streaming video viewing of the show from Dec. 22 to Christmas Day.

Of course, that “free stream” of video won’t mean much to the technically and economically challenged among us…but “Hey, it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Your initial reaction to this Apple TV+ corporate decision could very well be, “Where have I heard this before?”

Stop. Think. Remember.

You first heard this notion when you were old enough to understand the plot of “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Our forlorn hero is even more forlorn as Christmas Day approaches; Charlie Brown bemoans the commercialization of the Christmas season.

Thankfully, there’s good news but more on that in a moment.

First, a word not from but for Apple.

Sure, corporate executives made a “business decision.” After spending big bucks for exclusive rights to the “‘Peanuts’ Gallery” of TV Specials, those rights aren’t exclusive if you share freely of the one special that’s most special in a way that insures the widest possible distribution.

But maybe you should listen to the question asked by the star of the show.

Charlie Brown shouts it out of exasperation, in a volume that can be heard even in a soundproof Executive Suite: “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

Linus answers him, quietly, effectively, and movingly from the Gospel of Luke: “For unto you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.”

Linus then concludes, “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

That’s what Christmas is all about, Apple executives.

That’s what Christmas is all about, dear reader.

Our Creator loved us enough to send his most beloved creation out of the splendor of eternity and into the squalor of a sinful world to give us the gift of eternal life, if we accept it.

“Peanuts” Creator Charles Schulz accepted that gift and chose to share it with others.

That’s why he insisted that the passage from Luke be included in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

But other members of his creative team were skeptical, even way back in 1965.

“You can’t put the Bible on television,” one told him.

see HAYWORTH page 19

A Christmas wish for real human contact

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

Tribune Columnist

It was a Christmas morning a half century ago in a cramped second-floor apartment in New York. The little boy, 6 years old, had done everything save petition his parents and Santa for a “big boy bicycle.” Something without training wheels. A bike he could pedal like the wind.

The boy awakened at dawn to gifts spilling out from under the tree, but no bicycle in sight. There was a bulging stocking with plastic soldiers, a new football, some toys he’d break in hours, but nothing with wheels and pedals.

This would have been the holiday that dashed the boy’s heart for eternity. But then his mother made a magical statement.

“Did you look in the shower?” she said. “Maybe it didn’t fit under the tree.”

Hollywood has never done a grander reveal. There it was: A Huffy bicycle in a shade of gold like bars of bullion. With high handlebars and a banana seat that was all the rage in 1971. The boy immediately would have ridden through the living room and down the dozen steps to the sidewalk had the golden machine not come with a list of rules, including no stunts like Evel Knievel.

The boy rode that bicycle for years, until he was 12 and he couldn’t pedal it without his knees threatening to clock his jaw. The golden bicycle took him on so many adventures. It remains the single greatest Christmas surprise of his lifetime.

Now it’s 50 years later. The boy sits with his fingers on a keyboard, pondering another Christmas morning. He has every material thing he could ever want, plus his health, a warm home and love in his heart. There is a tree in the other room with presents spilling out.

What more could he – could I – possibly want?

For a few days, I have not been able to escape a gnawing in my heart. It started, strangely enough, when I walked into the grocery store and saw a winding line of humans waiting for a self-service checkout machine to come free. The registers were all closed, not a cashier to be seen, just one harried employee scurrying around trying to coach a half-dozen people checking out themselves.

I used to joke about how my hurry to leave the grocery store. “Hello,” the cashier would say, all chummy. “Plastic,” I would bark, because, haha, I was too busy to spare a moment for human interaction.

Now – be careful what you wish for – we have machines incapable of chat.

Later that night, I turned on the news to a photo op from Sky Harbor airport. Courtesy of Waymo, Phoenix is the first city in the world where driverless taxis will take you to the airport. As Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego put it at a press conference, “The future is here.”

Indeed, it is. And I’m not all that psyched about it.

On this Christmas, all I have is a simple ask, as much a gift for you and yours as me and mine. At no time in history have there been more ways to remove humans from life’s many equations – drone deliveries, automated checkouts and ordering kiosks, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence. We can chat using Snap, Zoom into meetings. We can be everywhere, all without being physically present to those with whom we live

“If we don’t do it, who will?” Schulz responded.

The passage from Luke remains, even if the annual nationwide telecast has now ended.

The same Bible that motivated and inspired Charles Schulz also warns us of the tackiness, trendiness, and yes, sinfulness of this temporal world.

Charles Schulz was called from this temporal existence into eternal rest more than two decades ago.

The Bible in which he believed also said of the Savior in whom Schulz believed that He “is the same yesterday, today, and forever,” and that His gift of salvation is available to all.

You can’t say you haven’t been invited.

May you and yours celebrate a peaceful, joyful, and meaningful Christmas…whether or not you watch

“A Charlie Brown Christmas.” 

LEIBOWITZ from page 18

and love.

It is cold. It is a poor substitute for the one thing I want this holiday season. For us to be a little more present, a little

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more kind, a little more human.

It is a simple thing to wish for, though like that bike, it would not fit under the tree. Merry Christmas, friend. I hope you have love and everything else you desire. 

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