Apple to Let Us All Stream the Charlie Brown Holiday Specials for Free
This year, AppleTV+ will allow customers and non-subscribers alike the brief opportunity to stream It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas for free, no strings attached. I guess they didn’t get the memo that what we really wanted was real estate.
On December 9, 1965, CBS aired the first-ever animated television special adaptation of Charles Schulz’ beloved comic strip Peanuts, a quick, festive, 25-minute holiday story called A Charlie Brown Christmas. Written by Schulz, directed by Disney and Warner Bros. animation veteran Bill Melendez and commissioned and sponsored by the Coca-Cola Company, A Charlie Brown Christmas was a labor of both love and tight deadlines as Schultz and Melendez scrambled to deliver their corporate masters a passable product to which they could hitch some custom-made Coca-Cola advertisements.
Despite the sentimental Christian theming of the special and its explicit criticisms of consumerisms, A Charlie Brown Christmas was, for all practical purposes, a commercial product designed to boost sales for its corporate overlords — so let’s see if it boosts AppleTV+ subscriptions this December.
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The classic Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas-themed Peanuts specials will be free to stream for exactly two days each during the month leading up to their respective holidays, thanks to the benevolence of the Apple corporation. If Apple really wanted to make the season special, they would replace every fifth MacBook order with a rock.
AppleTV+ will first allow non-subscribers to stream It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for free on October 19th and 20th. Then, on November 23rd and 24th, us moochers will have access to A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, before Apple closes their season of giving with a free streaming of the first Peanuts special and arguably the most iconic Christmas classic ever on December 14th and 15th.
Cynically, it’s hard not to believe that AppleTV+ is only giving non-subscribers this brief window to witness some of the most sentimental works of animation in American history because they now own the exclusive streaming rights to 39 of the 45 total Peanuts TV specials produced before Apple acquired the library, and Apple wants to get ahead of any Grinch-like allegations that they’re gatekeeping the most beloved moments in TV history at the expense of the non-subscribing poor. But rather than give full, untethered access to the most valuable pieces in their collection, AppleTV+ will give us this short glimpse into TV history before pulling it back behind the paywall, thus enticing us to cough up the full subscription fee.
But, hey, even when Coca-Cola were the capitalist pigs behind CBS airing A Charlie Brown Christmas, it didn’t stop us from forming invaluable memories with our families and learning about the true spirit of the season: the birth of our lord and savior Jesus Christ.