Snoopy: the Santa of Thanksgiving

An Art Dogs Thanksgiving edition

Handlers for this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade look to a team leader for instructions at practice. See more photos from balloon training here.

Happy Thanksgiving Art Dogs!

This week’s edition is short, sweet, and seasonal. We’re celebrating with Snoopy.

Snoopy is the alpha balloon at the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Seriously, one of my friends is a “balloon handler” this year, and everyone wants to walk Snoopy.)

The first Snoopy premiered at the parade in 1968, and more than 40 Snoopys have followed—the most appearances of any style balloon.

The first Snoopy in 1968, dressed as the Flying Ace

A Goodyear engineer named William Ludwick from Akron, Ohio, designed the first Snoopy balloon. It took “nearly eight months and 1,500 man-hours” to “design, cut, seam, glue and assemble the more-than-4,000 square feet of fabric going into the carcass.”¹ That first Snoopy balloon weighed 250 pounds and stood 50 feet tall.

By 1969, they’d turned Snoopy into an astronaut.

In 1987, he morphed into an ice skater.

Today, Snoopy’s balloon weighs closer to 540 pounds. It’ll require up to 90 handlers to walk him through the streets of Manhattan. The handlers act as both chauffeurs and human anchors—they are each required to weigh at least 120 pounds to keep Snoopy from soaring away.

As you might imagine, there are lots of fun facts about the Macy’s balloons to read up on.

Snoopy doesn’t just grace our TV screens and skies as part of the parade each Thanksgiving. “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving,” turns 50 this year. The show first aired on CBS in 1973, and now feels like a time capsule from the Vietnam War era. Here’s one of my favorite scenes of Snoopy preparing an unusual Thanksgiving dinner:

You can watch the special for free on Apple TV here. NPR did a write up about how the movie has aged here.

One of the best things about these short Peanuts films is the music. If you’d like to tune into those sounds today, as I plan to, you’re in luck. A new reissue collects the entirety of the 1973 television score for the first time. As Pitchfork writes: “it’s a lithe, funky counterpart to the wintry, wistful moods of A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The composer, Vince Guaraldi, drew inspiration from the growing funk movement of Northern California in the early 1970s.

I hope you enjoy the tunes, balloons, and, if you’re celebrating, the revelry with loved ones today.

Happy Thanksgiving, Bailey

Bonus: Photos of Charles Schulz with dogs

A young Charles Schulz with his first dog, Snooky (circa 1926).

Charles Schulz in Minnesota sharing a soda with his beloved childhood, dog Spike, circa 1940. (Spike had a notoriously strong stomach). Schulz would later pattern Snoopy’s appearance after Spike, and the dog’s behavior became the inspiration for some of Snoopy’s cartoon antics.

Charles Schulz’s home life with his children was surrounded by dogs. At one point each of the five kids had a pet of their own. LIFE magazine captured photos of Schulz, his family, and their dogs in California in 1967 here. Photo by Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Charles Schulz with his wife and one of his family's five dogs in California in 1967. Photo by Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Charles Schulz with one of his family's five dogs in California in 1967. Photo by Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

None of the family dogs “grabbed Schulz’s heart” the way Spike did until a wire-haired rescue terrier named Andy entered his life in 1988. Andy was so special that Schulz had to immortalize him in Peanuts as one of Snoopy’s siblings. Photo: 1992

The late Charles Schulz with his rescue dog, Andy. © Jean Schulz, Courtesy of Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center

Art Dogs is a weekly dispatch introducing the pets—dogs, yes!, but also cats, lizards, marmosets, and more—that were kept by our favorite artists. Subscribe to receive these weekly posts to your email inbox.

1. https://www.beaconjournal.com/story/lifestyle/around-town/2018/11/18/hang-on-snoopy/8287381007/