Kids like Snoopy. They might like Woodstock, too, I don't know. But they definitely dig Snoopy. More so than they do Charlie Brown, who, analyzed as the ostensible child that he is, always seems soaked in a self-pity that keeps him ever at a distance, however much we might want to relate to him. Or Linus, a savant who swaps back and forth between eloquent wunderkind and eminent pushover. Lucy's just a bitch. No, the World War I Flying Ace was always more relateable to a seven-year-old Half-Drunken Scribe than the rest of the gang ever was.
The staying power of Peanuts has always been its nostalgia, fueled by adults who strongly identify with Charlie Brown's myriad plights of conscience. Christmas is one week away, and while the smaller, Snoopy-liking version of myself would be ready to burst at the seams, adult-ish me frets and stresses over all that must be done in the meantime and all that will have to be done afterward. Kids don't have an after-Christmas. There is no after-Christmas for them. School just sort of starts up again. But adults have pre-Christmas, Christmas, and post-Christmas. And while our yuletide responsibilities change rapidly, our expectations are much slower to adapt.
At the risk of invoking White People Problems, I, like Charlie Brown (always full-named, by the way, never "Charlie;" Peppermint Patty calls him "Chuck," of course, but that's the joke... I think), can't help but wonder how much of it is worth it. How much should be scaled back, just so the holiday can have a chance to meet expectations without killing us. Because Christmas is a perfectly fine holiday. There's just too much baggage (sometimes literally).
And I don't even have kids.
Anyway, here's Linus' from-memory recital of Scripture, overdubbed with Orson Welles' "cuckoo clock" speech from The Third Man. Crude? Maybe. Childhood wounding? Definitely. Briefly funny? Oh yes. And in the end, isn't that what the holidays are about?
Probably not, no.
No comments:
Post a Comment