Vince Guaraldi Trio's Jerry Granelli

Part of the magic of the whole thing is that nobody had any big plans while making the soundtrack, like, “This is it!” We just played, man. It’s a jazz record. It was pretty natural and real. People heard the heart in it. Honestly, I turned left creatively with my career after that and never thought about it for a while; jazz musicians are sometimes not as open as they may seem when it comes to people having hits or things crossing over—everybody gets all uppity. But then I matured enough to realize that it went way beyond music. It was the first entry point to jazz for a lot of people. And now that I’ve got my credentials as an artist, I’m proud and delighted to be a part of it.

I'm Jewish and didn't grow up watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. For this reason, I can say—without the fog of nostalgia—that it is a masterpiece. "Christmas is coming, but I'm not happy—I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel" is such a poignant opening line of dialogue. It is direct and sad as it echoes what so many are often afraid to say. I didn't see the special until early adulthood and was struck by how moving it was. Everything about it is perfect: the style of animation, the decision to have the voice actors played by real children, and, maybe most of all, Vince Gauraldi's soundtrack. One December I was playing a show with Woods, and they asked me to join them on stage for a rendition of "Christmas Time Is Here". It felt so good to sing that song with a band, and it was a big hit with the crowd! I may not have grown up watching this iconic special, but now I watch it every year.

Woods: "Christmas Time Is Here"

Veruca Salt’s Louise Post

As a kid growing up in the ’70s, seeing a cartoon of children dealing with anxiety and depression was illuminating and liberating. We were all finding our way through those perplexing years, navigating a path through the world of adults—my parents divorced when I was eight after years of unrest—and here was a world made up exclusively of children, expressing their feelings, having their own experience. It was for us. It became sacred. I also felt a closeness with the Peanuts characters, as if they were my childhood friends, and I related to the sibling relationship of Lucy and Linus. I played piano, like Schroeder, and my father was a psychiatrist, so he and Lucy had that in common. Snoopy was my favorite character, and my stuffed Snoopy was with me all throughout childhood and beyond. In college, I got the soundtrack, and it gets played on repeat every Christmas. And now that I have a little girl, we watch the special every year again, too.