As a dutiful father of a young child, I have watched A Charlie Brown Christmas too many times already this season. Amazingly, I still like it, though it’s no thanks to the characters. In fact, now that I almost have it memorized, I can say with authority that the Peanuts characters are all horrible people.

Charlie Brown is a depressive. Lucy is violent and sexually predatory, yet maintains a side gig doling out psychiatric advice for a nickel. Linus clutches his blanket and shakes like Danny Torrance from The Shining as he recites biblical passages with a full awareness of his own futility. Snoopy is not “mercurial,” or “imaginative”—he’s an unrepentant sociopath of the Talented Mr. Ripley variety who sells out his boy Charlie time and again: When Charlie gets the opportunity to turn his life around and direct the school play, Snoopy actually boos his introduction to the cast. “Man’s best friend,” is all Chuck can muster, but I’ll say it: What an asshole.

Had that scraggly tree Charlie picked out been loved for what it was, we’d have had a moral on our hands. But instead, the Peanuts gang (and let’s be clear—it’s a gang) loot Snoopy’s award-winning doghouse, tart the tree up to look exactly like everything Charlie Brown hates, and present it to him. But—get this—Charlie Brown loves it! Of course! Because Negative Attention Is Better Than None at All, Charlie Brown. As they join together in a wide-mouthed version of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” any hope for a message is demolished. Conform, consume. Buy that pink aluminum tree, quote scripture to an empty auditorium, and sing the pain away.

“We’re doomed!” — Violet