Tidings of Great Joy

As occasionally happens, my dad found himself stumped with Sunday's Jumble. He'd unscrambled four words, yielding the letters needed for the fifth, but the following clue didn't mean anything to him:

”This character starred in his first TV special in 1965.”

Additionally, there was an illustration of a woman watching television thinking, ”This colorful character and his friends were sort of nuts”.

He asked me what I thought, initially asking me if there was anyone on Friends with a long first name. “Chandler...?” ventured I. “No,” he said, “It's a name with seven letters.

I took the weekly television listings from him, and studied the puzzle on the inside front cover. He had locked into the word “friends” but it was “1965” that caught my attention. The name they were looking for had seven letters followed by five and, though I didn't know it at the time, three of the letters were wrong because he'd put “DAYWORK” instead of “WORKDAY” for one of the other answers. Nevertheless, that's a slim excuse for missing the clues on my part. I hopped on my computer, punched in “1965 TV specials”, and the answer leapt off the page.

“It's based on a comic,” I told him. “It's a REALLY famous holiday special.” He wasn't familiar with comics or holiday specials. I pointed out that part of the name was in the clue...”nuts”...”Peanuts”...

“I don't know any of those people.”

“What?! It's in the paper every day!”

“I don't read that.”

“You must know some of them...the main kid...?”

“...Snoopy? That's all I know...”

“Good grief.”

The answer was, of course, Charlie Brown. Because of the DAYWORK/WORKDAY confusion, we were missing an “A”, but once we sorted that out the answer fit. I can understand my dad not being familiar with comics or cartoon characters, but I really should have gotten that from the clues. I guess with staples like A Charlie Brown Christmas, we're apt to associate the origination date with when we first saw it, in my case the early ‘80s. Not more than five days ago, I read a Newsarama post about how the special wasn't well-received by the network, who deemed it “slow” and were wary of quoting the Bible. The full story can be found at Mental Floss, and I'm just glad the executives were proven wrong and we can still hear Linus explain:

"And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them! And they were sore afraid ... And the angel said unto them, "Fear not! For, behold, I bring you tidings o great joy, which shall be to all my people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ, the Lord."

"And this shall be a sign unto you: Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the Heavenly Host praising God, and saying, "Glory to God in the Highest, and on Earth peace, and good will toward men."

"That's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."



Merry Christmas!