Die Peanuts - Erntedankfest

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 have watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving for many years and of all the Peanuts specials that I have watched and reviewed for this website, this is my favorite. The opening scene where Lucy pulls the football away from Charlie Brown always cracks me up. If you watch it on DVD or tape it off the TV, play back the football scene in slow motion to see Charlie Brown in mid air.

As for the rest of the cartoon, I thought Peppermint Patty was bossy and rude to Charlie Brown, inviting herself, Marcie and Franklin to Charlie Brown's for Thanksgiving dinner, monopolizing their phone conversations and even worse, complaining about the nontraditional cuisine. She was also flirtatious toward Charlie Brown. There were also outstanding sight gags involving Snoopy and Woodstock and the scene where they get the food ready for the feast that's set to "Linus and Lucy." It proves that cartoon scenes can work well without dialogue.

I also liked the scene near the end when the kids are in the car and they sing "Over the River and Through the Woods" en route to the Brown's Grandma's condo for a real Thanksgiving dinner. Before or after you go over the river and through the woods for your holiday feast, watch this cartoon. You'll even learn about the holiday in Linus' Thanksgiving prayer.

I have always enjoyed these "Charlie Brown" specials as

I called them...It always tells me a holiday will be coming shortly when i watch this on television. there is a weird quality to these specials...they are children oriented, but they seem to have a lot of strong messages

behind them for anyone of any age....like Linus's speech

about Massasoit--a young one who loves his blanket and

sucks his thumb, and to be so smart is like an oxymoron, a mature child..I'm sure we can all relate to one of the

characters in a way!

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.

Thanksgiving is not really something that is acknowledged and certainly not something that is celebrated in Scotland, but I watch this TV special every year in the run up to Xmas just to get me in the mood. The cartoon begins with the usual gag where Lucy yanks the football away from Chuck. I guess he'll never learn to distrust women, eh.

But his main grief in this one is the fact that all of his friends invite themselves over to his place for Thanksgiving despite the fact he's going to his grandmother's for the celebration. Snoopy and Woodstock work together (and against each other) to prepare a slapdash dinner including toast, jelly beans and popcorn. Needless to say the rest of the Peanuts gang are far from impressed with the menu, though that doesn't stop Peppermint Patty putting the moves on Chuck.

All this talk of food has made me hungry.