The Story Behind ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ [VIDEO]

The second longest running Christmas special almost never aired.

First there was 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer' in 1964, and the next year saw the debut of 'A Charlie Brown Christmas'. They are numbers 1 and 2 as far as the longest running holiday specials on TV are concerned.

However, the Charlie Brown special had so many growing pains, it almost never made it on television.

According to a story at USA Today.com:

"Midway through production in 1965, executive producer Lee Mendelson remembers a visit from an ad executive at McCann-Erickson, whose client Coca-Cola commissioned the special. Looking at rough pencil drawings and animation tests with no music, "he said: 'This isn't very good. I don't know what I'm going to tell the agency. If I tell them what I think, they're going to cancel the show,' " Mendelson says. "I said, 'Well, wait, whoa, this is all very rudimentary. If you believe in Charles Schulz and his characters, you're just going to have to trust us that this is going to be great.'"

Once the story's outline got the green light, the creators were only given about five months to design and construct the special, including animation, the child voice actors, and the wonderful music score by Vince Guaraldi.

In fact, the opening theme, 'Christmas Time is Here' was recorded just four days before the special debuted.

The rest, as they say, is history. Close to half the country watched the very first airing in December of 1965, and it continues to draw decent numbers to this day.

And to think, this timeless Holiday classic almost never saw the light of day.