Charlie Brown gets a Pen Pal

I've loved Peanuts (especially Snoopy) since I was tiny. The theme for my third birthday party was Snoopy and Snoopy's Christmas is still my favorite Giftmas song. Thirteen years ago, my husband and I rescued a litter of kittens and named them all after Peanuts characters. We kept Charlie and Linus (who turned out to be a girl and was later renamed), Our Charlie is, really, the Charlie Brown-iest kitty of all (kind of clumsy, not the brightest, but exceedingly sweet).

Still, when The Peanuts Movie was announced, I was a little skeptical. Getting nostalgic has been a letdown for me lately. I was pretty sure they were going to shit all over my childhood and modernize Charlie, Snoopy and the gang - they'd all have cell phones and be even meaner. We went to see it yesterday afternoon, because we'd heard that the Schultz family was involved in the production

My fears were unfounded. It's not exactly the Peanuts of my childhood, but I think it's better. It's subtly a kinder, gentler Peanuts. There was an entire school class seated behind us and they were entranced (seriously, we hardly knew they were there). Thanks to the enduring charm of the franchise, they'd probably all seen A Charlie Brown Christmas or It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown so it wasn't entirely new. I recommend this movie to anyone who isn't a curmudgeon & who can sit still for 92 minutes (plus the inevitable, probably terrible, trailers). Also, you need to be able to handle a change in the animation style. Listen for old friends - Snoopy, Woodstock & the "adults" are from the original recordings - and new (all the kids are played by kids!).

Oh yeah, the Pen Pal thing. I almost forgot (not really). No spoilers, I promise, but on the last day of school, the kids chose partners for a summer pen pal project. I was pretty excited about it, envisioning real life parents using that as an introduction to letter-writing. No letters were actually written (it's a summer activity), but good old Chuck's partner promises to write over the summer. 

And now there are these stamps, so letter writing geeks who have a soft spot for the Peanuts gang can have some fun with that. I don't really do Giftmas in the normal way (I'm not religious) but I've loved A Charlie Brown Christmas since I first saw it and I still watch it almost every year, even though I fast-forward through Linus's recitation near the end. I'm a little bummed that there are only two stamps showing a mail box, but I plan to buy a few more sheets and save those for non-holiday mailings.

These have inspired me to send Giftmas cards this year, something I haven't done in absolutely ages.