Editing A Charlie Brown Christmas (section)

=== Development ===
By the early 1960s, Charles M. Schulz's comic strip ''Peanuts'' had gained enormous popularity.<ref name="makingof">{{cite video| people = [[Whoopi Goldberg]], [[Lee Mendelson]] |display-authors=etal | title =The Making of ''A Charlie Brown Christmas''| medium = DVD| publisher =Paramount Home Entertainment |date=2004}}</ref> Television producer [[Lee Mendelson]] acknowledged the strip's cultural impression and had an idea for a documentary on its success, phoning Schulz to propose the idea. Schulz, an avid baseball fan, recognized Mendelson from his documentary on ballplayer [[Willie Mays]], ''A Man Named Mays'', and invited him to his home in [[Sebastopol, California]], to discuss the project.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=11}} Their meeting was cordial, with the plan to produce a half-hour documentary set. Mendelson wanted to feature roughly "one or two" minutes of animation, and Schulz suggested animator Bill Melendez, with whom he collaborated some years before on a spot for the Ford Motor Company.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=12}} Mendelson later stated that he was drawn to doing an animated Charlie Brown after working on ''A Man Named Mays'', noting that Mays was arguably the best baseball player of all time, while Charlie Brown, in a [[running gag]] in the strips, was one of the worst, making him a natural follow-up subject to his previous work.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1997/novdec/articles/mendelson.html |title=Life After Snoopy |first=Marc |last=Greilsamer |magazine=Stanford Magazine |date=November 1997 |access-date=February 3, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208045202/http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1997/novdec/articles/mendelson.html |archive-date=December 8, 2006 |url-status=dead }}</ref>

Despite the popularity of the strip and acclaim from advertisers, networks were not interested in the special.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=14}} By April 1965, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' featured the ''Peanuts'' gang on its magazine cover, prompting a call from John Allen of the New York-based McCann Erickson Agency.<ref name="makingof" /> Mendelson imagined he would sell his documentary, and blindly agreed to Allen's proposal: an animated half-hour ''Peanuts'' Christmas special.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=14}} The Coca-Cola Company was looking for a special to sponsor during the holiday season. "The bad news is that today is Wednesday and they'll need an outline in Atlanta by Monday," Allen remarked to Mendelson.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=15}} He quickly contacted Schulz, and the two got to work with plans for a ''Peanuts'' Christmas special.<ref name="makingof" /> The duo prepared an outline for the Coca-Cola executives in less than one day, and Mendelson would later recall that the bulk of ideas came from Schulz, whose "ideas flowed nonstop."{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=17}} According to Mendelson, their pitch to Coca-Cola consisted of "winter scenes, a school play, a scene to be read from the Bible, and a sound track combining jazz and traditional music."{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=19}} The outline did not change over the course of its production.<ref name="enq" />

As Allen was in Europe, the duo received no feedback on their pitch for several days.{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=17}} When Allen got in touch with them, he informed them that Coca-Cola wanted to buy the special, but also wanted it for an early December broadcast, giving the duo just six months to scramble together a team to produce the special. Mendelson assured him – without complete confidence in his statements – that this would be no problem. Following this, ''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' entered production,{{sfn|Mendelson|2013|p=17}} and was completed just ten days shy of its national broadcast premiere.<ref name="makingof" />