Times have changed. You can’t watch it on television anymore – unless you are an Apple TV subscriber. But for 50 years it was a broadcast television staple at this time of year.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is based on the Peanuts comic strip that became popular in the 1950s. The strip was a cultural juggernaut, appearing in more than 17,000 newspapers worldwide, read by hundreds of millions of people daily.

Nowadays people are more likely to ask “what is a newspaper” than to read one. Peanuts is still around, but in reruns. It no longer has the cultural oomph it once had.

But the stories remain timeless, hence the enduring popularity of the Christmas special, which was first broadcast in 1955. The story of Charlie Brown, Linus, Lucy and the Peanuts gang kicks off many people’s Christmas season.

These days if course no-one would make such a program, or at least not in Canada. Our sense of political correctness and desire to be non-offensive would preclude airing a show where one of the characters, when asked the meaning of Christmas, reads aloud from the Bible. In today’s Canada that scene would be cut for sure.

There is a moment in the program that I missed when I was younger. As in, I saw it, but didn’t realize the significance. It happens as Linus is reading the familiar words of Luke about the appearance of an angel announcing Jesus’ birth.

Linus, as he reaches the line about not being afraid, drops his blanket. Which, if you don’t know the characters is no big deal. If you do know, it is a profoundly moving sight.

Linus is a poster child for insecurity. So unsure of his place in this world, he carries a blanket with him wherever he goes. It gives him a sense of security.

When Linus drops the blanket, he is showing his trust in God. The angel has said there is no need for fear. He hears and believes. It works in the broadcast the way it wouldn’t in a comic strip – you can see him let the blanket go and practically hear it hitting the floor.

In this Christmas season of 2023 there are so many things we can be afraid of. There are wars at our doorstep, unrest at home, economic problems, health issues – and looming above it all is the uncertainty of climate change.

At that first Christmas, when the angel appeared to the shepherds outside Bethlehem, there were also many things to be afraid of. The Jewish homeland, first century Palestine, was under Roman occupation. Life expectancy was short. Literacy was low. Prospects for advancement were limited.

Yet God sent an angel in those troubled times with a message that resonates today. “Be not afraid.” Bad things may be happening, but there are bigger things as well. God is in control, and there is no reason to fear. The Messiah has come.

That was a good message then, and perhaps an even better one now. Be not afraid.