USA Today ran a great story on the production of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" which will air tonight on ABC at 8:00pm Eastern Time. According to the article:

When CBS bigwigs saw a rough cut of "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in November 1965, they hated it.... There were concerns that the show was almost defiantly different: There was no laugh track, real children provided the voices, and there was a swinging score by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi.

The article goes on to point out that the elephant in the room was really the overt religious references. Bill Mendelson, the show's animator is reported to have said, "We told Schulz, 'Look, you can't read from the Bible on network television.'" In the end, however, the character Linus Van Pelt read from The Gospel according to Luke.

This is one of my favorite half hours of television of the entire year. I've always found something new and interesting in A Charlie Brown Christmas whenever I've watched it. I never really considered the historical significance of Linus' soliliquy, but now that I think about it, that's another reason why I enjoy the program.

I think America is a religious nation at it's core, and all of our religious traditions should have a place in our culture. So, I'm a supporter of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Adam Sandler's Eight Crazy Nights, and everything in between. If not for A Charlie Brown Christmas, lots of these other holiday specials would never have been produced.

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