A Charlie Brown Christmas

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) is the beloved animated holiday special you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Bill Melendez for CBS from Charles Schulz's original script. The 25-minute film aired for the first time in December 1965 and drew nearly half of all American television viewers that night — a record it held for years.

Charlie Brown is miserable at Christmastime. Everyone around him seems caught up in competition, commercialism, and staging an elaborate school pageant, while he can't shake the feeling that the whole season has gone wrong. When he picks a small, drooping real tree instead of the plastic ones everyone else wants, the gang turns on him. It takes Linus, blanket in hand, to stop the noise and say out loud what the holiday is actually about.

Vince Guaraldi's jazz score gives the film an atmosphere no other Christmas special has managed to replicate in sixty years. The animation is deliberately rough, the humor quiet, the message delivered without a shred of preachiness — which is exactly why it still works. Stream A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) online on iFILM.