Editor’s Note: Please enjoy this 2023 remastered version of what has emerged as the most consistently visited article on any of my old blogs. This article is not tech-related, but it’s Christmas time, my birthday was last weekend, and I’m making excuses.
An Underrated Christmas Song
Why does Snoopy (in persona World War I Flying Ace) always get so quickly outmatched by the Red Baron? It’s Snoopy’s own fantasy. You’d think he would win these air skirmishes (I am trying my best to avoid “dogfight” puns).
I find myself asking this question during December, when Christmas carols are in the air, including an obscure favorite of mine, Snoopy’s Christmas. It was written and performed by a band from Florida that named themselves “The Royal Guardsmen” in an attempt to seem British, and then proceeded to write songs mostly about Snoopy.
Snoopy’s Christmas is one such work of fan-fiction, set in WWI – or rather, in Snoopy’s imagined WWI – wherein Snoopy is a pilot whose arch-nemesis is a renowned German Empire fighter pilot known as The Red Baron.
It’s a real banger. Check it out here, if you need to know what exactly I’m writing about:
The song is a unique Peanuts tribute/pastiche - a musical rendering of an all-original episode of Snoopy the WWI fighter pilot. Fun fact, the Royal Guardsmen started writing Snoopy fan-fiction rock ‘n’ roll, and only asked the permission of Charles Schulz afterward. Schulz graciously worked out a royalty arrangement, and here we are.
Anyway, true to the pattern set within Charles Schulz’s cartoon, The Royal Guardsmen have flying ace Snoopy getting promptly bested by The Red Baron. In fact, he gets completely owned within the same verse in which he takes flight, just as in the cartoon he’s always getting shot down or has already crashed and is lost behind enemy lines within the very first frames of a given episode.
The Royal Guardsmen give this story a Christmas twist, however, as The Red Baron mercifully spares Snoopy, and does not pull the trigger. He instead directs Snoopy to safely land, in order to wish him a Merry Christmas and share a toast. Then, the two part ways.
It’s a touching little story, but I’m still puzzled by the dilemma I stated at the beginning of the article. Snoopy’s such a loser of a pilot; why? Why would one have a fantastical recurring daydream, laced with relentless failure? That’s out of character for Snoopy, but I have a theory: that word failure calls to mind Charlie Brown, does it not? Suppose then, that this Flying Ace obsession is all Snoopy’s way of relating to Charlie Brown, by acting out a long saga of miserable failure.
What History Can Tell Us About Snoopy
To test my theory, I embarked upon an internet deep-dive regarding The Red Baron, WWI, and particularly the encounter described in Snoopy’s Christmas. After performing the due diligence of listening to all 26 hours of Dan Carlin’s WWI series, I have arrived at some conclusions.
First of all, numerous corners of the internet repeat - with confidence - that Snoopy’s Christmas is set against the backdrop of a true, actual, historical event, known as the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Per Wikipedia:
In the week leading up to 25 December, French, German and British soldiers crossed trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and talk. In some areas, men from both sides ventured into no man’s land on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to mingle and exchange food and souvenirs.
Upon further research, however, I have my doubts that Snoopy’s Christmas is set in 1914.
You see, it is widely accepted that there were no beagles piloting aircraft in combat during 1914, and I discovered further, in my research, that Manfred von Richthofen, aka, “The Red Baron,” was not piloting aircraft in 1914 either. He did not even begin to train as a pilot until 1915.
No Richthofen at the Christmas Truce of 1914, and no airborne beagles. Facts.
The Royal Guardsmen, I will say further, also knew that this incident involving Snoopy and Richthofen did not occur in 1914. The first verse makes this clear:
“The news had come out in the First World War
The bloody Red Baron was flying once more”
In order for the song to make sense within an historical context, we must assume that the Red Baron had:
Been flying.
Ceased flying for some period of time.
Returned to flight, as of the time of the scenario being described in the song.
No such series of events had occurred as of December 1914. However, a matching timeline can be found in 1917. The Red Baron sustained a head wound in the summer of 1917, and his return to flight was in question. Surprising the world, he returned to flight by October of the same year. And so, Christmas 1917 would meet the perfect timeline for “news to have broken,” that the Red Baron was “flying once more.”
It is, then, a plausible theory that the returned threat of the formidable Red Baron is what led the Allies to counter, by deploying acclaimed “flying ace” Snoopy to the combat arena.
And it just gets more interesting! Manfred von Richthofen died in April of 1918. We therefore must conclude that December of 1917 is the only time when the events described by The Royal Guardsmen in Snoopy’s Christmas can possibly occur.
And here, the Snoopy saga takes a dark turn. Understand a bit about the factual details of the death of The Red Baron: he was fatally wounded during a dogfight (fine, I’ll say it) with Canadians, who were piloting Sopwith Camels. Interestingly enough, Sopwith Camel is not only the actual name of a real, historical aircraft, but it is also Snoopy’s aircraft of choice, throughout Peanuts canon. In fact, I’ve never heard or read the phrase “Sopwith Camel” outside of Peanuts, until this Wikipedia entry about the death of the Red Baron. It would seem to me, that by placing his Snoopy character in such a specific aircraft, Charles Schulz is very deliberately implying that Snoopy was in the skies on that fateful day when Manfred von Richthofen was sent to the grave.
We don’t know who shot down the Red Baron. Among historians, there is much ambiguity, controversy, and speculation over which pilot could claim this feat.
A strong case may be made that it was Snoopy.
If so, when you listen to the whole Snoopy’s Christmas song again in this light, and consider the timing and nature of Richthofen’s death, you’ll notice that Snoopy killed Richthofen mere months after Richthofen had spared Snoopy’s life, called him “mein friend,” and shared a Christmas toast.
Stone. Cold. Snoopy.
What Can This All Mean?
This is disturbing.
If Snoopy’s persistently failing Flying Ace character is supposed to be some sort of parallel to Charlie Brown’s own tortured existence of failure, then what are we to make of his peculiarly morbid ultimate success? Certainly, in the context of the war, Snoopy merely followed orders, by killing his Christmas “friend,” but it is difficult to imagine a more hollow and conflicting victory.
What then of Charlie Brown? Is Snoopy’s Christmas an ominous foreshadowing of a parallel arc for him - a path of murderous treachery? Does Charlie Brown one day win the baseball game and marry the red-headed girl, but only via some deadly betrayal of, I don’t know, maybe Linus?
Good grief!
In conclusion, what’s actually going on is that a genius artist, Charles Schulz, worked out a royalty agreement with some goofy guys from Florida, and as a consequence, there has been some sloppiness in mixing in new story lines and layers to Snoopy mythology. Also, I’m definitely reading far too much into all of this.
My goodness, I remember that song! I think I first heard it on the old Dr. Demento show on KROQ in Los Angeles, which was all about silly novelty songs. Fond memories.
You make a good point about how it seems out of character that Snoopy is always shot down by the Red Baron in his fantasies, and you may well be right that it's a subtle connection with Charlie Brown. I guess that was always in the back of my mind, too. I think a lot of Peanuts' enduring appeal comes from a pervasive feeling that striving is heroic because success is so distant. But I think there is a practical reason as well — if Snoopy ever got the best of the Red Baron, then the running gag comes to an end. IIRC, the only time Richtofen was shot down was when was killed. So it would conflict with the historical record. And I don't think it was that much of a humiliation to get shot down by the Red Baron; he was such a legendary figure that it would be a disappointment, but not necessarily a humiliation.