Tomorrow night, starting off ABC’s prime-time lineup in the US will be an hourlong special devoted to one of the greatest half hours in the history of television! It’s Your 50th Christmas, Charlie Brown will be airing in this, the 51st year of airing A Charlie Brown Christmas (because that’s how anniversaries work!) Hosted by Kristen “Yes, I have her picture on a t-shirt, why do you ask?” Bell (known for her talents on screen in Veronica Mars and behind the microphone in Frozen), it will have musical performances by Kristin Chenowith (who won a Tony for playing Sally in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, and provided the voice of Fifi in The Peanuts Movie) and Pentatonix (who make fine music but always seem to forget their instruments), it’ll have celebrities, it will have… oh, stuff, it’ll have stuff, I’m sure. There really shoulda been a new book about the special this year (I should’ve hustled better in setting that up), or at least a new book adapting the special this year (oh, wait, there are four or five), but I’m looking forward to this show.

(By the way, this is not the first time Kristen and Kristin have been involved in the same project; Mses Bell and Chenowith did a fun movie together, Hit and Run. It may be a little salacious at time for some of my audience, but it’s very human in ways.)

Following the showing of the special will be a showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas (what a happy coincidence!) which will be padded out to an hour by the repeat airing of a Prep & Landing: Operation Secret Santa, celebrating its fifth anniversary. That puts those cartoons pretty late in the evening for kids on a school night.

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