I feel more intimately connected to Charlie Brown than to any musician or any athlete, and I care about Peanuts more than any novel or any film. I’m almost embarrassed by the depth of this feeling. I haven’t watched A Charlie Brown Christmas in at least twenty-five years, solely because I can’t emotionally reconcile the final scene: I can’t get over the fact that the other kids don’t tell Charlie Brown that his decision to pick the tiny, pathetic tree was ultimately the right call. They wish him a Merry Christmas and help him sing “Hark! The Herald Angels,” but they never concede he was
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