A Charlie Brown Christmas is the first of many animated television specials based on the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz, it originally aired on CBS on December 9, 1965. In the program, Charlie Brown questions the meaning of Christmas, if it has lost its true meaning from all the commercialism. Many of the Peanuts characters that had been introduced into the strip by 1965 feature in the program. "Pig-Pen", Frieda and even Shermy feature in minor roles, 5 and his sisters 3 and 4 appear in non-speaking roles, performing memorable dances.