The holidays simply aren’t the holidays without the iconic Peanuts specials and Thanksgiving is no exception. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is a must-watch holiday tradition for many families and this year, the beloved Peanuts classic celebrates its 50th anniversary. However, like last year, the Peanuts Thanksgiving special won’t be broadcast on ABC or PBS. Instead, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will be exclusively available on Apple TV+ — and non-subscribers will have a chance to watch it for free.
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This year, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will be available on Apple TV+ for non-subscribers to stream for free between Saturday, November 18th and Sunday, November 19th. For Apple TV+ subscribers, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is available all year round, so they can enjoy it and other Peanuts specials at any time — not just the holidays. The platform is also the home of new Peanuts content, including The Snoopy Show and Snoopy Presents specials, such as Lucy’s School, For Auld Lang Syne, and One-of-a-Kind Marcie.
In A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, Peppermint Patty invites everyone to Charlie Brown’s for Thanksgiving, even though he’s going to see his grandmother. Meanwhile, Snoopy decides to cook his own version of a Thanksgiving meal with help from his friends.
Will There Be New Peanuts Holiday Specials?
While the Peanuts holiday specials remain classic must-watch seasonal entertainment for many, particularly around Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, Craig Schulz, son of series creator Charles Schulz, has previously cast doubt on there ever being new specials for those same holidays.
“In all those cases, it’s led to extensive conversations between myself, my son, our group here in Santa Rosa, which consists of over 20 people, and what we think is right or wrong,” Schulz previously shared with ComicBook.com about delivering new specials honoring Halloween or Christmas. “And we have had ideas for a Christmas special, but the three biggies — Christmas, Pumpkin, and Thanksgiving — are so sacrosanct, we just won’t touch anything near that. But we weren’t afraid to go on the edges, so we thought about that. But we like the road we’re going down right now rather than just trying to play off something like that. So, we’ll see where it ends up.”
He continued, “New Year’s is a good example. We did [Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne], which is a play on New Year’s. And New Year’s had been done probably at least twice in the past, in the animation specials. So, it was a different take on that, and I think it added a lot of emotion that maybe the original one didn’t necessarily have. It was a good story, but I think we tried to bring emotion to it, and that’s what my son Brian just really, really hammers home. If there’s no emotion, let’s not do it. And he just drives it on every single line, basically, which is good.”
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving streams year-round for subscribers on Apple TV+. Non-subscribers will be able to watch the special for free November 18th and November 19th.
