(Editor’s note: Lucille “Lucy” Van Pelt, now 58, is speaking out against her role in the famous Christmas special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” These are her words.)
Look, I was in a lot of holiday specials with the so-called “Peanuts gang”. Seriously, who came up with that name? Anyway, for some reason, people seem to latch onto “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. Of all the specials, why that one? It’s the worst one of the bunch, and it’s the most inaccurate. Sure, it’s all based on true events, but they got so much wrong. It’s like the idiots who made the special weren’t even there.
Oh wait, they weren’t.
So let me be the first to set the record straight. I only waited fifty years because ABC was paying me to keep my mouth shut, so they could keep airing the special untainted. But ABC, fifty grand isn’t enough to buy my silence anymore! So let me set the record straight: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is all bullshit.
Well, okay, they did get one thing right: it was snowing that winter. But people had to be suicidal to skate on that lake. Sure, it froze over, but you could never guess when the ice would break and you would be more frozen than frozen food that’s been sitting in the freezer for a year. It was never a matter of if the ice broke; it was a matter of when. I let Linus make the mistake of stepping out on the frozen lake the year before. He fell in after taking two steps in. Mom never let me hear the end of it, but I laughed my ass off for years just thinking about it.
Anyway, Charlie Brown did show up at my psychiatrist’s stand that day, and I did rush over to help him. I was the smartest kid on the block, mostly because I knew the fear of stairs was called bathmophobia and the fear of everything was called panophobia. Also, every kid on my block was a dumbass, so that helped my case. And Charlie Brown paid me a dollar to help him, not a stupid nickel.
But let’s set one huge thing straight: I didn’t want to ask Charlie Brown to be the director of the Christmas play. Sure, the kid needed involvement, but he could’ve gone to join the chess club or something equally depressing and nerdy. The special makes me look like I was happy to have him directing the play, but that was not the case. The only reason I did it was because literally no one else wanted to do it. Everyone wanted to be in the play, because they were all the greatest kid actors to ever grace the planet. That’s what every one of those idiots said. And despite my natural ability for bossing people around, I sure as hell couldn’t be the director. I was already cast as the Christmas princess.
Yes, you read that right: Christmas princess, not Christmas queen. I didn’t want to have to make any Christmas decisions; I just wanted to boss people around and look pretty, because let’s face it, in addition to being the smartest kid on the block, I was also the prettiest. Some people are just cursed like that.
But unfortunately, Charlie Brown accepted the director position, and we were stuck with him. He had a really big problem getting people to listen to him, though. All we wanted to do was dance because my Schroeder baby had a real knack for playing piano. But nooooo, Charlie Brown wanted to actually direct, because apparently having that much power went to his head. But I did finally realize that we needed to get stuff done, so I sent Charlie Brown off to get a Christmas tree to “get everyone in the spirit”. Really, it was just easier to direct the play myself, even if he did have the official title of director.
Speaking of that dumb tree he got… I don’t know who the hell came up with the idea of me wanting an aluminum tree, because those don’t even exist. All I wanted was some sort of fake tree that I could decorate all by myself the cast could decorate together without worrying about it getting fir needles everywhere. But no. Charlie Brown came back with a stupid little tree with three branches. It was no wonder that we all laughed at him. I don’t care if we made him depressed; he should’ve listened to me. Everyone should listen to me, and then everything would be fine.
But Linus wanted to cheer up Charlie Brown, so he went on some rant about the true meaning of Christmas. I honestly think Linus thought he was quoting the Bible, but let’s face it: Linus can’t memorize a sentence, let alone multiple lines of scripture. It was mostly him babbling on about baby Jesus and pretending commercialism doesn’t exist… It does. Commercialism is the true meaning of Christmas, even if this stupid special was trying to deny that.
Whatever Linus said didn’t make Charlie Brown feel better, so he took his stupid tree and left. Apparently some of the other kids had more of a heart than I did, because some of them started to feel bad for him and wanted to go find him. So we all headed out in the snow and found him out near Snoopy’s doghouse (do not get me started on that dumb dog…)
And here’s where the special gets everything wrong. There was no saving that wimpy tree. We tried to decorate it, but it collapsed to the ground under the weight of one string of lights. What good is a Christmas tree if it can’t hold lights? Everyone else kept trying, but I got too frustrated. To ease the feelings, I made a snowball and threw it right at the back of Charlie Brown’s head. Luckily, instead of crying his eyes out as I expected him to, he turned around and launched a snowball back at me… and hit Linus straight in the face. Linus starting laughing, and soon everyone was throwing snowballs at each other. There was no singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, because seriously, who does that? Nope, there was just a snowball fight… albeit a pretty damn fun one.
Things turned out all right in the end, because the snowball fight diffused the tension. And I figured I should try to be nice to Charlie Brown, because Santa wouldn’t bring me any presents if I didn’t. So I let the blockhead kick a football once, just once, without pulling it out from under him.
But you can be damn well sure he never kicked that football again.
-Stacy Haerr, Staff Member