The Peanuts Christmas Special That Started It All

A Charlie Brown Christmas was the first animated TV special based on Charles Scholz's Peanuts comic strip. The show had a lot on its mind, taking aim at the commercialism of Christmas and devoting much of its runtime to a wistful search for meaning. In the 1960s, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were locked in an ongoing advertising war for domination of the Cola market. It's all the more surprising then that the special was originally conceived as a way to sell soda.