Snoopy's Christmas

"Snoopy's Christmas" is a song by The Royal Guardsmen which appears on the album Snoopy and His Friends (1967).

A followup to their earlier hit "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron", the song is a fictional account of how Snoopy was directed to go out and fight the Red Baron on a bitterly cold Christmas Eve. The Baron has Snoopy at his mercy after a long dogfight, but instead of shooting him down he forces Snoopy to land and offers Snoopy a chivalrous holiday toast. Afterward, Snoopy and the Red Baron fly their separate ways, "each knowing they'd meet on some other day".^[1]

The release begins with a chorus singing "O Tannenbaum" ("O Christmas Tree"). The middle of the song is bridged by chimes ringing out a phrase from "Hark the Herald Angels Sing". The chimes can also be heard during the fade-out at the end of the song. The album version of the song has a simulated radio news report of failed efforts at a Christmas truce, leading to Snoopy being sent out to hunt his sworn foe.

The song references the 1914 "Christmas truce" of World War I which was initiated not by German and British commanders, but by the soldiers themselves.^[2] The length of the cease-fire varied by location, and was reported to have been as brief as Christmas Day or as long as the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. Trench-bound combatants exchanged small gifts across the lines, with Germans giving beer to the British, who sent tobacco and tinned meat back in return. No Man's Land was cleared of dead bodies, trenches were repaired and drained, and troops from both sides shared pictures of their families and, in some places, used No Man's Land for friendly games of football.^[3] The song even has the initiator correct as it was generally the German soldiers who called over to the British and initiated the truce and, in the song, it is the Red Baron—a German WWI hero—who extends the hand of Christmas friendship to Snoopy.

«Snoopy's Christmas» alcanzó el puesto número 1 en las listas de sencillos de Nueva Zelanda y Australia ^{[ 5 ]} en 1967, y sigue siendo una canción navideña popular en esos países. La canción fue el sencillo de venta más rápida en el momento de su lanzamiento original y se estima que es el sencillo de venta más grande en el extranjero vendido en Nueva Zelanda en el siglo XX. ^{[ 6 ]} La canción reingresa frecuentemente a la lista de sencillos de Nueva Zelanda, apareciendo en diciembre de 1987, 1988, 1989 y 2013. ^{[ 7 ]} «Snoopy's Christmas» también fue votada como «la peor canción navideña de todos los tiempos» por los lectores del New Zealand Herald en 2007. ^{[ 8 ]} Bruce Ward, el ejecutivo de EMI que estaba en su primer año en EMI cuando decidió lanzar la canción como sencillo, atribuye su éxito al «extraño gusto musical de Nueva Zelanda». ^{[ 9 ]}

En Canadá, la canción alcanzó el puesto número 39 el 6 de enero de 1968. ^{[ 10 ]}

• Lista de canciones antibélicas

• Bruce Ward explica el éxito local de 'Snoopy's Christmas' , Charlotte Ryan entrevista al ejecutivo de EMI responsable del lanzamiento de Snoopy and the Red Baron y Snoopy's Christmas en Nueva Zelanda, 21 de diciembre de 2019, Radio New Zealand