Before I take part in any Peanuts TV special reminiscing and discussion, ToughPigs did the entire Muppet fandom a huge favor by tackling an annual annoyance...
the poorly drawn "Sesame Street characters sit down to a feast of Big Bird" cartoon
I HATE that thing. It wasn't funny the first time, and it grows unfunny with each and every year. Not because I'm offended by the thought of the death and consumption of a beloved character, but because the joke was done
far better themselves in the Muppet Family Christmas special. It's not so much "animal character=food. funny" so much as the Chef being convinced to cook Big Bird, having Big completely oblivious to this fact, and knocking out the Chef over and over with clumsy body movements. Sylvester eating Tweety isn't funny (though cathartic), it's how Sylvester keeps almost getting there, getting horribly injured, and going back for more.
Seriously. I HATE Animal=food=funny done lazily. Though ALF's celebrity cat cookbook from Mad Magazine was an absolute delight.
You think
that's bad? Ever hear of
"It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown"? Not only have I never seen this special, the only reason I even know about it is the inside covers of the 1980's released VHS in clamshell casing (clear, so you could see the inside cover printing, unlike the more familiar Disney clamshell releases) advertised other titles. Supposedly this was the last special to feature Vince Guaraldi. You think it would have been circulated around on that, at least from a fandom perspective. But the complete obscurity of the holiday (unless it's the punchline to a joke), it's no wonder why it disappeared. It's on one of the volume releases of TV specials WB released a while back, and no doubt out of print, and possibly online. And that's not including the non-Holiday specials, even though they were produced all the way up into the last decade with "He's a Bully" and "Lucy must be Traded." But props to ABC for airing the New Year's special in recent years.
As for Thanksgiving specials, the Garfield one really deserves some love too. Jon screwing up dinner to impress Liz after pathetic attempts to have her for a guest. Garfield being put on a diet and abusing the scale because it thinks he's Orson Welles. This one actually had some good diet gags in there as well, not to mention giving the real star of the Christmas special, Grandma Arbuckle, another time to shine.