By Mark Ellis —
As the sun dipped low over Buena Park, my wife Sally noticed a long line of people forming outside the Walter Knott Theater for the latest production of “Snoopy’s Night Before Christmas.”
We jumped in line with our son and daughter-in-law and two granddaughters, with low expectations for a free, ice-skating Peanuts show in a secular theme park.
Within minutes my heart was overflowing with delight, not only because of the spectacular skating, but also its meaningful content.
In an age when many Christmas productions tiptoe around the real reason for the season, Knott’s has done something courageous: they’ve let Linus take center stage and quote the Gospel of Luke verbatim, exactly as he did in the immortal 1965 TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Under the skilled direction of the incomparable ice show team at Knott’s, the Peanuts gang glides across the 5,000-square-foot Royal Welcome Ice Stage in a delightful retelling of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous poem. Snoopy dreams of sugarplums (and perhaps a certain Red Baron), Woodstock flits about in panic, Charlie Brown frets over Christmas meaning something more than commercial fuss, and Sally still wants “tens and twenties.” It’s all charming, funny, and impressively skated.
But then came the moment that may have caught many by surprise in the audience, including my wife and me.
The lights dimmed. Linus, wrapped in his trademark blue blanket, skated to the center of the rink with the same quiet confidence millions of us remember from childhood. The orchestra fell silent. And in his gentle, endearing voice he proclaims:
“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid…”
Word for word. Luke 2:8-14, King James Version, just as Charles Schulz insisted on 60 years ago when network executives tried to cut it from A Charlie Brown Christmas.
In 2025, in a major American theme park, with thousands of families from every background watching, Linus finishes with the line that has brought tears to generations: “And that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
The audience erupted in wild applause — the biggest response of the evening. In an era when the meaning of Christmas is obscured, here was a humble beagle and his blanket-carrying friend declaring the story of Christmas without apology, the Scripture undiluted, without a single content warning.
The decision to include Linus quoting the Gospel of Luke verbatim comes from the creative team at Knott’s Berry Farm (specifically the entertainment division under Cedar Fair/Six Flags) in collaboration with Peanuts Worldwide LLC, the company that now owns and licenses the Peanuts intellectual property.
However, that scene is a loving and deliberate homage to Schulz’s original insistence in 1965. When CBS executives tried to remove Linus’s recitation of Scripture from A Charlie Brown Christmas, Schulz famously replied, “If we don’t tell the true meaning of Christmas, who will?” and refused to budge.
Because that moment is now considered inseparable from the Peanuts legacy—and is protected as a core element of the brand—modern licensed Peanuts Christmas productions (including the Knott’s ice show, the stage musical, and some theme-park parades) almost always retain the Luke 2 reading when Linus appears in a Christmas context.
The rest of the show features spectacular spins, lifts, and jumps set to arrangements of Peanuts classics, with Snoopy stealing many scenes. Yet everything circles back to that sacred midpoint. The skating is world-class (several performers have Olympic and Disney on Ice credentials), the costumes sparkle under the colored lights, and the storytelling is tight—perfect for families with short attention spans.
When the finale arrived and snow gently fell inside the open-air theater, I found myself thanking God for Charles Schulz, a devout Christian who refused to let the networks remove the Scripture from his special, and now, decades later, for Knott’s Berry Farm choosing to honor that same conviction.
While Schulz himself had no hand in the current Knott’s production (he died 24 years before the current version opened), the inclusion of the biblical Christmas story is a direct result of the stand he took six decades ago.
“Snoopy’s Night Before Christmas” is a bright, unashamed proclamation that Jesus is still the heart of the Christmas message. Bring your kids and grandkids and let Linus point them that enduring truth.
[…] From godreports.com […]