Christmas in the 1960s: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Religion, and the Conventions of the Television Genre

This study of Christmas television programming from the 1960s is prompted by the repeated assertion that A Charlie Brown Christmas was an aberration within the television medium because its creator, Charles Schulz, dared to include religious content in the mainstream title. Grounded by historical/ar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of religion and popular culture
Main Author: Lind, Stephen J. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: University of Saskatchewan [2014]
In: Journal of religion and popular culture
Further subjects:B Christmas
B Television
B Peanuts
B 1960
B Religion
B secular, public
B Social participation
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Description
Summary:This study of Christmas television programming from the 1960s is prompted by the repeated assertion that A Charlie Brown Christmas was an aberration within the television medium because its creator, Charles Schulz, dared to include religious content in the mainstream title. Grounded by historical/archival research, this article presents a content analysis of Christmas titles from the 1960s formative decade-of-change in order to substantiate the claim of television's secularity. The findings demonstrate that even in the genre of Christmas programming, mainstream television has abided by a public/private split from this early era, embracing a model of secularity that resists references to religious belief. A Charlie Brown Christmas and its contemporaries are also analyzed to determine the conventions of the genre that may at times afford such religious aberration when otherwise followed.
ISSN:1703-289X
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of religion and popular culture
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3138/jrpc.26.1.1