A Charlie Brown Christmas - Censorship

Censorship

The special has not been seen in its original, uncut form since the first three telecasts in 1965, 1966 and 1967. Much of this is due to the opening and closing credits containing references to Coca-Cola, the show's original sponsor. Specific, acknowledged cuts are:

• The main titles have Linus crashing into a Coca-Cola sign (complete with the main titles and the creator of this cartoon) after Snoopy has spun both him and Charlie Brown around with Linus's blanket. In the versions currently available, the viewer never sees where Linus's trajectory lands him. Instead, they see Charlie Brown landing towards a pine tree which causes more snow to fall on top of him. The removed clip of Linus crashing into a Coca-Cola sign is seen in a 1965 promo for the film.
• The final end credit originally had a voice-over saying, "Brought to you by the people in your town who bottle Coca-Cola." This is why the "Hark!" chorus sung at the end trails off oddly before the song would normally end, as an announcer originally did a voice over at this point in the credits to repeat and reemphasize try the local bottler's well wishes to the TV audience. This edit was never changed, but in newer versions, a quick fade-out and fade-in revealed the "THE END" screen, in order to make the audio-fade seem more natural.
• In the "fence" scene, When Charlie,Lucy,Linus,and Schroeder try to knock off cans,The can was originally a Coca-Cola can. When Coca-Cola stopped sponsoring Peanuts, It became blank.

Although the FCC eventually imposed rules preventing sponsor references in the context of a story (especially in children's programming), this had no effect upon the decision to impose these edits.

When CBS aired the special in the 1990s, the network made further cuts to the special, including standardizing closing credits (removing the closing carol outright in the process), trimming out a series of scenes where the characters belittle Charlie Brown for picking a small Christmas tree (cutting straight to laughter), and removing references to commercialism. These cuts were made ostensibly to fit the special into the 30-minute time slot; commercial time per half-hour had increased by approximately 2 minutes between 1965 and the late 1990s. ABC, upon acquiring the rights to the special in 2000, restored all of these cuts, increasing the length of the special to 32 minutes including commercials, which required ABC to either commission or adjust existing programming to fit into the extra 28 minutes of the hour. ABC, however, has chosen to insert its commercials into different places in the program than were originally intended (fade-outs and fade-ins where the commercials are supposed to go are clearly evident), resulting in the commercials being haphazardly inserted in the middle of musical numbers or even dialogue.

Several scenes were cut from the first airing in December 2009 on ABC to make room for the new special Prep & Landing; cuts that were reprised in 2011 to make room for the sequel to that special. These include:

• Sally asking Charlie Brown to help her write a letter to Santa Claus.
• Snoopy eating a stack of bones while reading a newspaper on top of his doghouse.
• While Pig-Pen is building a snowman, Charlie Brown approaches and comments on the dust cloud kicked up in the snowstorm.
• Several of the kids trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues.
• Lucy, Schroeder, and Linus throwing snowballs at a can on a fence.
• Shermy's only line after being informed by Lucy that he will be playing a shepherd in the Christmas play.
• Lucy asking Schroeder to play a simple version of "Jingle Bells", only to hear him play three of them (conventional piano, Hammond organ, and toy piano on one finger).

The full version of the special is generally aired in the encore presentation, with Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales airing in the remaining time.