In the later years of his life Schulz also criticized what he called “those shallow religious comics” like “Dennis the Menace” praying “about some cutesy thing that he'd done during the day,” or the many references in “Family Circus” to Jesus. Said Schulz, “I can't stand that. You could get diabetes reading them, couldn't you?”
But “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and the dozens of Peanuts cartoons that have followed were also the product of a Jewish producer from San Francisco and a Mexican-American Catholic whose mother brought him across the border in the 1920s.
Read Full Article »