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Christmas in the 1960s: A Charlie Brown Christmas , Religion, and the Conventions of the Television Genre

2014; University of Toronto Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/jrpc.26.1.1

1703-289X

Stephen J. Lind,

Media Studies and Communication

Abstract: This study of Christmas television programming from the 1960s is prompted by the repeated assertion that A Charlie Brown Christmas was an aberration within the television medium because its creator, Charles Schulz, dared to include religious content in the mainstream title. Grounded by historical/archival research, this article presents a content analysis of Christmas titles from the 1960s formative decade-of-change in order to substantiate the claim of television’s secularity. The findings demonstrate that even in the genre of Christmas programming, mainstream television has abided by a public/private split from this early era, embracing a model of secularity that resists references to religious belief. A Charlie Brown Christmas and its contemporaries are also analyzed to determine the conventions of the genre that may at times afford such religious aberration when otherwise followed.