Die Peanuts - Erntedankfest

Charlie Brown and Sally are going to their grandmother's for Thanksgiving. Peppermint Patty calls and invites herself and then Marcie and Franklin to Charlie Brown's for Thanksgiving. Linus suggests Charlie Brown have two Thanksgiving dinner with the help of Snoopy and Woodstock. Peppermint Patty is angered by the lack of traditional Thanksgiving food but Marcie convinces her to apologize. Charlie Brown's grandmother calls and invites everybody to her place.

Peppermint Patty's voice by Christopher DeFaria is really rough and raspy. It's a little bit jarring. Otherwise, this is a charming Charlie Brown holiday special and it holds up well. It has the innocence of the simple cartoon drawings. Also it's a single story without the usual detours. This just has the sense of the impending Holidays that appears every Fall. I do wonder if there is anything wrong with Woodstock eating turkey.

Yes, here we actually had a Charlie Brown holiday where Linus was not a complete buzz kill. A change of pace from the norm for him, but his one is a simple tale of a couple of Charlie Brown's friends inviting themselves over for a Thanksgiving day feast when Charlie Brown is intending to go to his grandmother's house so he and his pal Linus and Snoopy cook up a feast all on their own. This grand meal including plenty of toast and popcorn. I like this one, to me it is the funniest of the three most well known ones...Halloween and Christmas being the other two. This one is also about the poor holiday stuck between Halloween and Christmas and to me seems to be almost a forgotten holiday these days as the retail stores push Halloween and Christmas and seem to ignore Thanksgiving all together. This one really shows the friend or family member that likes to kind of invite themselves to dinners and things like that this time of year as the culprit in this case is the ever exuberant Peppermint Patty. Marcie comes along too. I know lots of people that kind of tag along events such as these mainly because they do not want to cook themselves so I guess this one sort of hits home, and for me is the funniest and best of the holiday trio.

Throughout the years I have see the film a few times during the holidays. I would rank it as one of the top ten Peanuts films that Charles Schulz did. As a child I could relate to Charlie Brown whose cooking skills only include making toast and popcorn. After reading the comment about Woodstock eating the turkey, I noticed some thing else slightly distrubting. In this film short Charlie Brown invites all his friends for dinner. Yet Charlie Brown's only ethnic friend is Franklin, who is African American. Franklin does not say more than two lines in the film. Yet considering the film is nearly 30 years old this limited inclusion of multi-ethinic persons is understandable.

I remember seeing "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving" back in the 80s when I was just a child. Every Thanksgiving they would show this at night time, since I was around 6-9 years old I couldn't stay up late to watch cartoons. But my parents made exceptions in these cases. Heck, I even recorded this on BETA! Thats right those tapes that are half the size of VHS tapes! Now that I'm older I wonder where time went, one day I'm a kid sitting on the living room rug watching Charlie Brown the next day I'm in my room hearing the advertisement on TV for the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving holiday special. Since I saw this when I was a kid I must say I was scared of the last portion of this presentation, the part where Charlie Brown camps out of a house. Damn that scared me! All I can say is that this is a classic for anyone who saw this as a kid. What's wrong with those people that gave this a 1 rating?!?! Some people just have problems.

In my opinion, this is an excellent holiday special which is very appetizing. However, I couldn't bear seeing Snoopy and Woodstock having to endure all that torture. In addition, the thing that really makes this special worth watching is the score, especially "Little Birdie and "Linus And Lucy." When those songs are performed, I always get warm and tingly. I would have to say that's my favorite song of this special. If you ask me, Charles M. Schulz was a really good artist. In conclusion, I highly recommend this excellent holiday special which is very appetizing to everyone, especially all you fans of the comic strip who have not seen it. When you see it, prepare to smile, have a good time, and bon appetit.