Jingle Bell Jawns #3: 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' -- Vince Guaraldi Trio

Good morning. Thanksgiving 2022 is now a recent memory. The turkey has been gobbled and those of us who live under the “No Christmas Music Until Thanksgiving is Over” rule can now allow ourselves to crank up the jingle bells and whatnot. This means that it is time for me to forge ahead with my Jingle Bell Jawns series of entries on albums and CDs in my Christmas music collection. Today’s entry is a big one, maybe the biggest one of all for some people.

First though, I don’t know about you, but I feel like the word “liminal” has been popping up in my reading/listening for the last several years. It’s the kind of word that I have felt like I’ve understood well enough that I have not bothered to check its definition or think much about it all. Until now, that is.

According to Oxford Languages, “liminal” is defined as “1) Relating to a transitional or initial stage of a process. 2) Occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold.”

Much of Thanksgiving week feels liminal to me. If you’re working the first few days of this week, your head might not be fully in the game. You feel yourself over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday slipping into that Thanksgiving frame of mind, and, if you indulge in the upcoming holiday season, you realize that these are the last days you’re going to have for a while that aren’t going to be at least slightly tinged by the season.

But maybe you’re not ready for the season? Maybe you’re approaching Thanksgiving and what is to follow with apprehension, sadness, flat-out dread or a wicked combination of all of this. Where does this swirling miasma of pre-holiday anxiety leave you on the Tuesday afternoon before Thanksgiving?

Fortunately, today’s Jingle Bell Jawn, A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, gets you. Not only was this music the perfect soundtrack to the beloved 1965 animated Christmas special; it’s also the perfect soundtrack to your tentative entrance into Holiday Madness 2022.

And yes, A Charlie Brown Christmas is very much “liminal” music. At least to my ears.

 Jingle Bell Jawn #3: A Charlie Brown Christmas — Vince Guaraldi Trio (Fantasy Records, 1965, though my CD reissue was released in 1988).

How Did I Acquire This Album? More than likely, I bought this CD at a Tower Records, a Borders, or a Barnes & Noble bookstore. This would have happened several years ago.  

Does This Album Include a Version of “Jingle Bells”? Ironically, given Linus and Lucy’s “Can you play ‘Jingle Bells’?” conversation, this CD does not contain “Jingle Bells”.

What’s The Story on This Album? This is, of course, the soundtrack to the December 1965 animated television special, which has become a beloved holiday classic. The soundtrack album was originally released in conjunction with the debut of the special. It has been reissued many times since then.

What Does This Album Mean to Me? Wow. How to even tie this together?

First of all, I have seen exactly as many Christmases as The Charlie Brown Christmas and its soundtrack have. I have a kinship with things that were let loose into this world in 1965.

This, of course, means that this music has lived somewhere inside me from the moment I first heard it, probably during an annual airing of the TV special in the early 1970s. I can’t recall a moment when, while watching the show, I suddenly became aware of the music, but I’m sure it registered early on for me. I always notice music.

So this music has spent my lifetime in my head, as it has for millions of people my age. But, with that knowledge, flash forward with me to this past Tuesday. I’m headed out in the afternoon to pick up my son Chris at the Norristown train station. I roll my Mystical Dice of Random Holiday Music Destiny just to see what pops up, even though I’ve determined that I’m not going to listen to Christmas music until after Thanksgiving.

However, the dice choose A Charlie Brown Christmas and I decide that, yes, I’ll take a chance on Vince Guaraldi (piano), Monty Budwig (bass), and Colin Bailey (drums).

The truth is, despite my enthusiasm for this Jingle Bell Jawns series, I have not been eagerly waiting to jump into the holiday season. This is the second holiday season in a row in which we are facing the new absence of a loved one – my mom last year, and Donna’s mom this year – and thoughts of missing our moms/grandmoms are inevitable. Plus, I’ve just got too many other things on my mind.

Note: this circumstance in no way makes me special. In fact, I’d guess that most people feel at least a bit of dread in facing the end-of-year holidays, even if some of these people will never admit to it.

The beautiful thing about A Charlie Brown Christmas though, is that much of the album gives voice to that holiday ambivalence. Of course, the album is known for “Linus and Lucy”, a towering classic in the realm of West Coast cool jazz; and the utterly joyful, goofy-dance-inducing “Christmas Is Coming”. However, these two tracks are somewhat anomalous to the much of the rest of the album which, separated from the dialogue and visuals of the show, is very much its own introspective, quietly moving entity.

As I drove toward Norristown, I found myself caught up in the reverie of A Charlie Brown Christmas. Cranking the volume on “Linus and Lucy”, of course, but also noticing the juxtaposition of hearing the beautiful but somewhat moody “Christmas Time Is Here” just as I passed a house where a group of people was in the process of setting up on one of the biggest, splashiest Christmas lights/decorations displays in this area.

I also realized during that car ride that, while the Charlie Brown TV special is pretty straightforward in contrasting the glitzy aluminum Christmas trees to Charlie’s tree and connecting this contrast to Linus’ gospel recitation, the album, taken on its own terms, leaves room for other interpretations of the holiday season. I like that open-ended nature.

The drive to Norristown is not long but A Charlie Brown Christmas was the perfect soundtrack for that drive two days before Thanksgiving. It gave me a few minutes to reflect and focus. It helped me realize that, while yes, I’ll ultimately leap in and be one of the kids dancing goofily onstage this holiday season (at least metaphorically, though I did play one round of the Just Dance video game last night), I don’t have to be one of those kids just yet.

Plus, the comforting thing about listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas early in the season is knowing that it’ll be there throughout December whenever I need a little refuge and recentering, while still enjoying the Christmas music experience.  

Highlights: “Linus and Lucy” and “Christmas is Coming” are clearly highlights, but this album is one big highlight and should be treated as such. For maximum effect, listen to the entire album, in the order in which its presented. No shuffling. And clearly, feel all the moods A Charlie Brown Christmas will generate. That’s the point.

Lowlights: There are no lowlights on this album.

Oddities: The only oddity about this album may be its lack of “Jingle Bells”, given the classic Linus & Lucy conversation.

How Do I Rate This Album, in Strictly Musical Terms, on a Scale of 1 to 5 Jingle Bells? The music on this album rates at least 5 out of a potential 5 jingle bells. A Charlie Brown Christmas is the quintessential example of a Christmas album that could be listened to any time of the year, and appreciated purely on its musical merit.

This also seems to be the best place for me to state that A Charlie Brown Christmas was one of my earliest on-ramps to jazz, even if I couldn’t have recognized it as such when I was six or eight or 10 years old. Without Guaraldi & company, I might not have ever gotten around to appreciating the genius of Thelonious Monk. Jazz purists might quibble about me making this point, but ultimately one thing leads to another and for me, Guaraldi led to Monk.

How Do I Rate This Album, in Personal Emotional Resonance (P.E.R), on a Scale of 1 to 5 Partridges in a Pear Tree? I’m going to have to go 4 out of 5 Partridges on the P.E.R. scale as well. It’s hard to imagine anyone who has grown up over the last 50+ years not having a personal connection to this music, though I do recognize that such things are never fully universal.

You might think I would have gone 5 for 5 on the P.E.R., but as much as this album might hit me viscerally, the purely musical resonance of A Charlie Brown Christmas is what is of primary importance to me. In short, when I listen to this album, I am too entranced by my mental interaction with the music in the present tense moment to be overtly ensnared by any perceived nostalgia from it.

Any music, holiday-adjacent or not, that connects your past, present, and future as fluidly as A Charlie Brown Christmas does, is music to cherish, at any time of the year and at any time in your life.