Good Grief!

It's the holiday season, of course; everyone knows that. With this knowledge comes tradition. We all have our own little ways of celebrating the holidays. One of the 'traditions' that come around the holiday season for me, is that every year, we find some way to watch How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the cartoon one- the good one) and A Charlie Brown Christmas. I like watching these, because it reminds me of being a kid and how I used to get so excited about Christmas. Santa was coming and all that. Now, I'm definitely not that excited anymore, but I still like the holidays. It's a good time for everyone and I like seeing the members of my family all gathered together. Now that I'm older, those movies I mentioned are more like things to remind me of being younger rather than hanging on to every word. What's fun about them now is that I can share them with my three young nieces, and have them enjoy what I did when I was their age. Of course, sometime they'll sit with me on the couch and ask questions about nearly every thing, but that's okay. I don't mind it.

What gets me every time, though, is A Charlie Brown Christmas. When you think about it, that poor kid takes a lot of crap. And for what? He has the nerve to get a real Christmas tree instead of a fake one that everyone else has? He gets ridiculed for being different. Seriously, if you watch again being all 'grown up,' you realize that those kids are mean. Even Snoopy is liked more than Charlie is. Linus is the only one who seems to understand him, too. It's so weird. The kids are all so terrible to him. "Boy are you stupid Charlie Brown," one girl tells him when he bring in the tree. "Rats," is all he replies. And this is after enduring the derisive laughter of the people he had previously considered friends. Call me crazy, but who wanted this poor kid to go through all of this just to learn the meaning of Christmas? It's a little insane. In the end though, Charlie Brown realizes that he does have friends and all that; that it's okay to be different and he learns what Christmas is all about, thanks to Linus. But still. He always gets put down. This is a kid who gets rocks for Halloween.

What kind of kid would he be nowadays? Would he be in therapy or something like that? Or would there be no Charlie Brown at all today? He'd probably be like, Emo or something. Wouldn't that be nice?

I've just realized... maybe Charlie Brown himself is the correct one, and all the others are wrong. Maybe he's been right this whole time. Who knows? But he always 'triumphs' in the end, which is inspiring, I guess. It does teach kids a good lesson: don't give up on yourself.

As long as Charlie Brown doesn't give up, then I guess he can go on being mopey. At least we know he'll come out victorious in the end.