VIDEO: BWW's 12 Days of Christmas with Guest Editor Richard Jay-Alexander; Day 8 - From 1965's A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS

BroadwayWorld.com is, once again, celebrating the Holiday Season with a special 'countdown' which will reveal some favorite holiday-themed performances! For the 5th Anniversary of this Exclusive Feature, we've invited director/producer Richard Jay-Alexander to be our first-ever Guest Editor, to share with us HIS holiday favorites. His list will be composed of holiday songs and boasting performances with artists we know and love from Broadway and beyond. We'll bet that this countdown will surely get you into the holiday spirit, as the big day rolls around on December 25th, but we won't forget Chanukkah and Kwanzaa either. This is sure to be a 'Must Check-In Daily' event to see what's on RJA's list, while we wish you Happy Holidays from all of us at BroadwayWorld.com!

Welcome to Day 8 of BroadwayWorld's 12 Days of Christmas holiday feature "videos."

Today, being Saturday, we chose a cartoon. A REALLY POPULAR cartoon. The song in the video clip is "Christmas Time Is Here" from A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS. The animated television special first aired on December 9, 1965 and was based on the famous characters in Charles M. Schulz' syndicated comic strip, PEANUTS. The comic strip began in 1950 and remained wildly popular until the year 2000.

By the mid '60s Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy and the rest of the gang were very much part of the culture. It even yielded a hugely successful Off-Broadway show, which opened in 1967, featuring music and lyrics by Clark Gesner and it won the Outer Critics Award for Best Production.

The music in the Holiday television special featured a jazz score by pianist Vince Guaraldi. It also gave us the "opening sequence" song that went on to be recorded by many, many artists, including Nancy Wilson, Take6, Mariah Carey, Sarah McLachlan, Toni Braxton, Diana Krall, Tony Bennett and even John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.

My personal favorite version was recorded by The Manhattan Transfer on their holiday album. The TV Special went on to win an Emmy and a Peabody Award and still "airs" every year. "Christmas Time Is Here" became an instant "classic" and remains so to this day. It's simplicity is arresting and it also evokes emotion.

Enjoy this one :)