The Power of Charlie Brown

Everyone loves Charlie Brown, the central character of the Peanuts world. Well, perhaps after Snoopy. 

There have been many Peanuts TV specials, in the area of 50 if memory serves. The best loved one is surely A Charlie Brown Christmas. I get chills at both Linus retelling the Nativity story, and especially when the gang leaps into Hark the Herald Angels Sing at the end. The show is rightly viewed (heh, heh, I just had to get the pun in) as a classic.

Did you know it single handedly destroyed the aluminum Christmas tree industry? Those of us old enough to remember recall the metal Christmas trees of the 1960s. 

As Linus and Charlie Brown are walking through a Christmas tree stand (right before discovering the sad little real tree) they lamented all the artificial trees available. One of them, I think it was Charlie but no matter, tapped an obvious metal one. It sounded like an empty oil drum. And on that scene alone, people virtually quit buying aluminum trees. 

Charlie Brown. He has the power of life and death over entire businesses.