While Christmas playlists often include cheesy favorites like “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree” and “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” there are also a handful of wistful tracks that go a little bit deeper.

Listen closely to “I’ll be Home for Christmas” or “White Christmas,” and you’ll hear a deep yearning for home, and sorrow at having to spend the holidays somewhere else.

Strip away the cursory Christmas rituals – the TV specials, the lights, the gifts, the music – and what remains is home. It is the beating heart of the holiday, and its importance reflects our primal need to have a meaningful relationship with a setting – a place that transcends the boundary between the self and the physical world.

Can you love a place like a person?

Most of us can probably name at least one place we feel an emotional connection to. But you probably don’t realize just how much a place can influence your sense of who you are, or how essential it is for your psychological well-being.

Psychologists even possess an entire vocabulary for the affectionate bonds between people and places: There’s “topophilia,” “rootedness” and “attachment to place,” which are all used to describe the feelings of comfort and security that bind us to a place.

Your fondness for a place – whether it’s the house where you lived your whole life, or the fields and woods where you played as a child – can even mimic the affection you feel for other people.

Studies have shown that a forced relocation can elicit heartbreak and distress every bit as intense as the loss of a loved one. Another study found that if you feel a strong attachment to your town or city, you’ll be more satisfied with your house and you’ll also be less anxious about your future.

Our physical surroundings play an important role in creating meaning and organization in our lives; much of how we view our lives and what we have become depends on where we’ve lived, and the experiences we’ve had there.

So it’s no surprise that architecture professor Kim Dovey, who has studied the concept of home and the experience of homelessness, confirmed that where we live is closely tied to our sense of who we are.

An anchor of order and comfort

At the same time, the concept of home can be slippery.

One of the first questions we ask when we meet someone new is “Where are you from?” But we seldom pause to consider how complicated that question is. Does it mean where you currently live? Where you were born? Where you grew up?

Environmental psychologists have long understood that the word “home” clearly connotes more than just a house. It encompasses people, places, objects and memories.

So what or where, exactly, do people consider “home”?

A 2008 Pew study asked people to identify “the place in your heart you consider to be home.” Twenty-six percent reported that home was where they were born or raised; only 22 percent said that it was where they currently lived. Eighteen percent identified home as the place that they had lived the longest, and 15 percent felt that it was where most of their extended family had come from.

But if you look at different cultures across time, a common thread emerges.

No matter where they come from, people tend to think about home as a central place that represents order, a counterbalance to the chaos that exists elsewhere. This might explain why, when asked to draw a picture of “where you live,” children and adolescents around the world invariably place their house in the center of the sheet of paper. In short, it’s what everything else revolves around.

Anthropologists Charles Hart and Arnold Pilling lived among the the Tiwi People of Bathurst Island off the coast of Northern Australia during the 1920s. They noted that the Tiwi thought their island was the only habitable place in the world; to them, everywhere else was the “land of the dead.”

The Zuni of the American Southwest, meanwhile, have long viewed the house as a living thing. It’s where they raise their kids and communicate with spirits, and there’s an annual ritual – called the Shalako – in which homes are blessed and consecrated as part of the year-end winter solstice celebration.

The ceremony strengthens bonds to the community, to the family (including dead ancestors), and to the spirits and gods by dramatizing the connection each party has to the home.

During the holidays, we might not officially bless our home like the Zuni. But our holiday traditions probably sound familiar: eating with family, exchanging gifts, catching up with old friends and visiting old haunts. These homecoming rituals affirm and renew a person’s place in the family and often are a key way to strengthen the family’s social fabric.

Home, therefore, is a predictable and secure place where you feel in control and properly oriented in space and time; it is a bridge between your past and your present, an enduring tether to your family and friends.

It is a place where, as the poet Robert Frost aptly wrote, “when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Frank T. McAndrew, Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology, Knox College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s hard to imagine a holiday season without “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The 1965 broadcast has become a staple – etched into traditions across generations like decorating the tree or sipping hot cocoa.

But this beloved TV special almost didn’t make it to air. CBS executives thought the 25-minute program was too slow, too serious and too different from the upbeat spectacles they imagined audiences wanted. A cartoon about a depressed kid seeking psychiatric advice? No laugh track? Humble, lo-fi animation? And was that a Bible verse? It seemed destined to fail – if not scrapped outright.

And yet, against all the odds, it became a classic. The program turned “Peanuts” from a popular comic strip into a multimedia empire – not because it was flashy or followed the rules, but because it was sincere.

As a business professor who has studied the “Peanuts” franchise, I see “A Charlie Brown Christmas” as a fascinating historical moment. It’s the true story of an unassuming comic strip character who crossed over into television and managed to voice hefty, thought-provoking ideas – without getting booted off the air.

Call from the blue

The “Peanuts” special came together out of a last-minute scramble. Somewhat out of the blue, producer Lee Mendelson got a call from advertising agency McCann-Erickson: Coca-Cola wanted to sponsor an animated Christmas special.

Mendelson had previously failed to convince the agency to sponsor a “Peanuts” documentary. This time, though, he assured McCann-Erickson that the characters would be a perfect fit.

Mendelson called up “Peanuts” comic strip creator Charles “Sparky” Schulz and told him he had just sold “A Charlie Brown Christmas” – and they would have mere months to write, animate and bring the special to air.

Schulz, Mendelson and animator Bill Melendez worked fast to piece together a storyline. The cartoonist wanted to tell a story that cut through the glitz of holiday commercialism and brought the focus back to something deeper.

While Snoopy tries to win a Christmas lights contest, and Lucy names herself “Christmas queen” in the neighborhood play, a forlorn Charlie Brown searches for “the real meaning of Christmas.” He makes his way to the local lot of aluminum trees, a fad at the time. But he’s drawn to the one real tree – a humble, scraggly little thing – inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale “The Fir Tree.”

Jazz – and the Bible

Those plot points would likely delight the network, but other choices Schulz made were proving controversial.

The show would use real children’s voices instead of adult actors’, giving the characters an authentic, simple charm. And Schulz refused to add a laugh track, a standard in animated TV at the time. He wanted the sincerity of the story to stand on its own, without artificial prompts for laughter.

Meanwhile, Mendelson brought in jazz musician Vince Guaraldi to compose a sophisticated soundtrack. The music was unlike anything typically heard in animated programming, blending provocative depth with the innocence of childhood.

Most alarming to the executives was Schulz’s insistence on including the heart of the Nativity story in arguably the special’s most pivotal scene.

When Charlie Brown joyfully returns to his friends with the spindly little tree, the rest of the “Peanuts” gang ridicule his choice. “I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about,” the utterly defeated Charlie Brown sighs.

Gently but confidently, Linus assures him, “I can tell you what Christmas is all about.” Calling for “Lights, please,” he quietly walks to the center of the stage.

In the stillness, Linus recites the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, with its story of an angel appearing to trembling shepherds:

And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a savior, which is Christ the Lord.

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men,” he concludes, picking up his security blanket and walking into the wings. The rest of the gang soon concludes Charlie Brown’s scrawny tree isn’t so bad, after all – it just “needs a little love.”

When Schulz discussed this idea with Mendelson and Melendez, they were hesitant. For much of U.S. history, Protestant Christianity was the default in American culture, but in the years since World War II, society had grown somewhat more mindful of making room for Catholic and Jewish Americans. Unsure how to handle the shifting norms, many mainstream entertainment companies in the 1960s tended to avoid religious topics.

“The Bible thing scares us,” CBS executives said when they saw the proofs of the special. But there was simply no time to redo the entire dramatic arc of the special, and pulling it was not an option, given that advertisements had already run.

Fun and philosophy

Fortunately for the “Peanuts” franchise, when the special aired on Dec. 9, 1965, it was an instant success. Nearly half of American households tuned in, and the program won both an Emmy and a Peabody Award. Schulz had tapped into something audiences were craving: an honest, heartfelt message that cut through the commercialism.

Millions of viewers have continued to tune in to the show’s annual rebroadcast for over 50 years on CBS and then ABC – and now Apple TV+.

When I was researching my spiritual biography of Schulz, “A Charlie Brown Religion,” one of my favorite finds was a 1965 letter from a Florida viewer, Betty Knorr. She praised the show for stressing “the true meaning of the Christmas season” at a time when “the mention of God in general (is) being hush hushed.”

The magic of Schulz’s work, though, is that it resonates across demographics and ideologies. Some fans find comfort in the show’s gentle message of faith, while others embrace it in a purely secular way.

Simple but poignant, Schulz’s art and gentle humor can do two things. They can act as safe entry points for some pretty hefty thoughts – be they psychiatric, cultural or theological. Or “Peanuts” cartoons can simply be heartwarming, festive entertainment, if that’s what you want.

Today, both the “Peanuts” empire and the Christmas industry are thriving. Back in the 1960s, commercial realities almost derailed Schulz’s special, yet those same forces ultimately ensured its broadcast. The result is a lasting touchstone of innocence, hope and belief.

Stephen Lind, Associate Professor of Clinical Business Communication, University of Southern California

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.