What do you do when the world thinks you’re a Lucy, but in your heart you know you’re really Charlie Brown? That’s the existential question that goes through my head every time ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ airs. Don’t get me wrong, I can well understand why some may think I’m a Lucy. The way she continually, and mercilessly, teases Chuck is a thing of inspiration. Not only the way she does it, but the way she takes such joy and glee in it. Giving a kid the hope that she’s not going to move that football again – sigh – my heart flutters at the unrelenting cruelty of it all.
But beneath that Lucy veneer, my heart secretly empathizes with Mr. Brown, with the under-dogs who fervently and earnestly believe in the good of the world, the hope that people will, eventually, do the right and just thing. The way he believed in the Great Pumpkin. The way he put his heart into his little Christmas tree. The way the world crushes him time and again. There’s something noble in that. Noble and heartbreaking.
Truth is, I’m not Lucy or Charlie. I’m not even that talented genius Schroeder.
I’m Snoopy.
Completely unconcerned, unmoved, and unimpressed by the world. Living a charmed, well-cared-for and carefree existence. (And often in the dog-house.) That’s closer to my lucky life than some mean girl or downtrodden boy.
