Link to the show: Young Adult Movie Ministry Episode 23 on Substack
Release date: December 16, 2020

Movie of the Week

A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), directed by Bill Melendez
[Currently only available with a subscription to Apple TV+]

Who the Hosts Are This Week

Sam is a half goat, half demon creature who punishes naughty children at Christmas. Alissa is the angel on top of the Christmas tree… or maybe she’s Santa.

Special Guest

Emily VanDerWerff is a critic at Vox, the first TV editor of The AV Club, co-author of Monsters of the Week: The Complete Critical Companion to The X-Files, and host of the mystery-comedy podcast Arden. (Emily says she is Sally Brown, the materialist screaming for tens and twenties.)

Other Mentions

• Beakman’s World (PBS show that Sam watched as a kid)
• Calvin and Hobbes (is it better than Peanuts?)
• Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan the Smartest Kid on Earth
• Sarah Archer’s book Midcentury Christmas
• The Complete Peanuts, published by Fantagraphics
• Bergen Street Comics in Brooklyn, which sadly is now closed
• The owl in the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree
• Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis (the authoritative Charles Schulz biography)
• Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, including The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold, Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July, and Frosty’s Winter Wonderland, which Emily describes as Bride of Frankenstein starring Frosty the Snowman
• Emily’s article at Vox about all those specials