A Charlie Brown Christmas vs. How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Charlie Brown <3 4eva!!!!!11!!!

Grinch always kinda made me ill.

C-Brown!

I voted Charlie too; the Linus & Lucy dance is the most sublime two minutes of television ever. (I was going to link to the "Hey Ya!" mash-up, but someone has gotten in there and seriously messed with the audio.) I do think the Grinch is pretty great, though.

Charlie Brown wins, but we should acknowledge right now that It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is the best of all animated holiday specials ever.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Never liked Peanuts, although I appreciate it better now than I used to. Always loved Grinch.

charlie brown voters, i disagree w/you.

i was going to respond in my usual manner but then i thought "dude do i really want to be the guy calling people dumb cocksuckers in a thread about childrens christmas specials" and changed my mind.

Charlie Brown wins for the soundtrack alone.

Tough call. Going with Grinch for anti-Christmas spirit and Karloff, but that Guaraldi score is untouchable.

Garfield!!!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ugh.

I'll give you guys the score though.

Grinch has a stupid low rating on rotten tomatoes

Consequently, 6.0 seems astronomically too high for the Ron Howard version.

I'm referring to that one. it is a masterpiece.

My mistake. You're nuts.

cold crowd cold crowd

the poll results are correct but the chuck jones grinch is just overflowing with awesome little details. the bit at the beginning with all the whos' bizarre toys was always my favorite.

repping for the live-action seuss movies is some real contrarian nonsense, though.

...EXCEPT 5000 Fingers of Dr T, you mean

forgot about that. saw it as a kid, remember it being cool, probably overdue for a rewatch.

Damn, the slap Lucy lays on Charlie roughly halfway through this original spot is cold as ice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XUDv7S1IpQ

The style and tone of that promo is a million miles from how it's done today.

Basically this poll kinda comes down to Chuck Jones vs. Vince Guaraldi

My kids loved the Grinch. I tried to watch Charlie Brown with them one Christmas, they all drifted out of the room after about 10 minutes. It's too talky for millennials.

FTR, I love them both, but Charlie Brown is an indelible part of my early impressions of Christmas. Linus's soliloquy still gives me goosebumps.

Craig Kausen, Jones’ grandson and president of the Chuck Jones Center for Creativity, frequently gives presentations on Jones's work, and he did a great one on Grinch about two years ago at MoMI. If he ever swings by your area, it's worth going to - he brings a lot of visual material and at one point showed us an early draft to I *think* "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" which had quite a few extra verses. (No photos were allowed, he mentioned the family didn't want this material freely distributed on the internet.)

lol at these results. Grinch is so much better.

I default to melancholy holiday fare, so I'm def team CBC

It's crazy to me (as I only just realized recently) that three of the most iconic and oft-played animated xmas specials (these two + Rudolph) were released over three consecutive years, '64-'66. And with almost no serious contenders coming along in the subsequent sixty years to challenge the throne.

This child of the '80s is all about this three-year run:

1986: The Christmas Toy
1987: A Muppet Family Christmas + A Claymation Christmas + A Garfield Christmas
1988: Christmas at Pee-wee's Playhouse

Even as a kid i always hated the religious scolding and anti-fun tone of Charlie Brown Christmas. Grinch by a country mile, for me.

At the same time ... only one of these two is pretty explicitly anti-consumerism

(xpost) Don't the anarchic outbursts (everything is brought under control, but only temporarily) as Charlie tries to direct the Christmas play show that fun is unstoppable?

This child of the '80s is all about this three-year run:

1986: The Christmas Toy
1987: A Muppet Family Christmas + A Claymation Christmas + A Garfield Christmas
1988: Christmas at Pee-wee's Playhouse

― stephen miller is not your friend (Eric H.), Tuesday, December 19, 2023 3:26 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean I personally vastly prefer that run (and feel that basically nothing bests the one-(missing beat)-two late-'70s punch of Emmet Otter and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street) but I'm talking about broader public perception of what constitutes the uncontested classics. None of the best stuff gets rerun on network TV every single year.

The anticonsumerist pose of Charlie Brown is fraudulent - the message ends up being that the meaning of Christmas is dependent on which consumer products you buy, the "right" or "wrong" kinds of decorations. Grinch otoh is about fully disentangling material goods from the celebration of Christmas. Otm that neither holds a candle to that 80s run.

Even He-Man's arch-enemy Skeleton can learn the true meaning of Christmas.

Emmet Otter and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street

be checking these out this xmas, thanks!

I had that Sesame Street record. Amazingly, it was basically the audio of the entire special

the message ends up being that the meaning of Christmas is dependent on which consumer products you buy, the "right" or "wrong" kinds of decorations

This is exactly the opposite of what I took from it.

This child of the '80s is all about this three-year run:

1986: The Christmas Toy
1987: A Muppet Family Christmas + A Claymation Christmas + A Garfield Christmas
1988: Christmas at Pee-wee's Playhouse

Technically, I guess this run was extended in 1989 with the first Simpsons episode, which was a Xmas one-off

This is definitely a generational thing. As a child of the 70s, I look at that list and have absolutely no interest in watching any of those.

Ditto me and anything connected with Rankin-Bass

Whereas those, and especially Rudolph, are beloved and inextricably linked with Christmas for me.

the message ends up being that the meaning of Christmas is dependent on which consumer products you buy, the "right" or "wrong" kinds of decorations

This is exactly the opposite of what I took from it.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, 21 December 2023 4:55 AM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah this is not at all what the movie is saying, explicitly or implicitly.

Charlie Brown Christmas so great for being heartfelt without being overtly sentimental. It treats these cartoon kids with respect, making these cartoon people far more real than most other depictions of children or adults in christmas media. And there’s so much silence in it! I think the silence is really what makes it unpalatable to a more modern audience.

Some absolutely killer line reads in it too. I use Sally Brown’s “all i want is what’s coming to me all i want is my fair share” line a lot. And yeah Linus soliloquy on point

TENS AND TWENTIES?!?!?!?!?!?!

I did an informal poll of this among my coworkers last night and it was 6-3 Grinch.

Little Drummer Boy is obviously the best one, followed by Charlie Brown Christmas

Little Drummer Boy is profound, especially because I associate it with my two-year-old brother playing an oatmeal canister "drum" in the church pageant.

xxxp i love the quiet tone of the charlie brown special, but i never liked that the essential conflict is between buying the "authentic" tree vs the "commercial" tree, its a false choice! grinch is the true revolutionary, charlie brown is a mouthpiece of the oppressor

Grinch steals all basic resources from his constituents and then trumpets his returning to them what they already owned, getting the head seat at the table in the bargain

Tbf they drove him to it by ignoring basic noise ordinances with their raucous celebrations. Law and order needed to be restored.

as much as I like both of these, I too am a child of the late 70s/early 80s and therefore believe Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas is the superior Christmas special

A mediated settlement would have been preferable to large-scale burglary.

Mostly a child of the '80s, but this late '70s entry (Looney Christmas Tales) got rerun a few times in my era:

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8plg4s

people voting grinch on this are deranged

My sister makes everyone watch Emmet Otter on Christmas Eve. Got me a River Bottom Nightmare Band tshirt for Xmas a few years back.

The Charlie Brown Christmas Special (like a lot of Peanuts) is so central to my core of being Ivethought about getting a tattoo of the christmas “tree” with “Christmas Tree Hugger” written around it in Schultz’s script font.

watching muppet christmas carol recently made me realize i prefer christmas fare that doesn’t have anything to do with jesus (sorry jesus, i do watch jesus christ superstar every easter to make up for it) so grinch >>>>

we did muppet christmas carol last night. generally speaking yes I agree with you but I charlie brown is my exception.

the more recent muppets holiday special(s? I think there were two more) really suck!

watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special from 1992 last night, and it's quite bad! the only good ones are those that look like Paul Klee paintings and have almost no discernable plot

yeah that 92 one is terrible.

i don't think anyone has done an adequate new christmas special in many years. nothing that lasts and feels iconic. (I'm talking TV specials, not movies, though there aren't that many of those either; Elf and Bad Santa are the last great ones. There have been a succession of made-for-streaming ones in recent years and they all fucking suck. I haven't seen Klaus yet though).

Dashing Through the Snow wasn't bad

thanks I'll check that out! my wife loves watching christmas movies and we burn through a million terrible ones every year. WE did Four Christmases last night (reese witherspoon and vince vaughn..this movie is from 2008 and somehow looks like it's from 1995), the first 1/3 of which is legitimately funny and the rest is a chore. I'll take what I can get at this point.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is canon.

The style and tone of that promo is a million miles from how it's done today.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Tuesday, December 19, 2023 1:19 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Trying to imagine a contemporary film trailer—let alone one designed for children—using the word “impudent”

I think it's used in the trailer for Asteroid City

The anticonsumerist pose of Charlie Brown is fraudulent - the message ends up being that the meaning of Christmas is dependent on which consumer products you buy, the "right" or "wrong" kinds of decorations.

good grief