Charles Schulz on the origins of the Peanuts animated cartoons

A man from Coca-Cola called Lee Mendelson once and said, “We're kind of looking around for a Christmas show. You don't have any ideas for us, do you？” And Lee told them, "I think we might." So Bill [Melendez] and I got together one night and wrote the Christmas story. And it was in the midst of deciding what would happen, I said, "Gee, Bill, we can't get around it -- if we're going to do a Christmas story, we have to use the famous passage about the baby Jesus." And we did. Linus walked out and said, "Lights, please!" And he recites the wonderful passage. No one had ever done this sort of things before. And we did it.