( You can rent the property where he worked before the arena was built, in Sebastopol, on Airbnb.) A lifelong sports enthusiast, he played hockey there until shortly before his death in 2000 at 77. Schulz, who was known by his nickname “Sparky,” had his studio at the arena and would eat breakfast and lunch at the rink’s cafe, the Warm Puppy, most days.

The rink, Schulz’s tongue-in-cheek temple to ice hockey, was built in a redwood grove at the far end of town - near the then-new, now delightfully dated Coddingtown Mall - and modeled off of a Swiss chalet. Instead, in 1969, he funded the construction of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, aka “Snoopy's Home Ice,” aka the “Coolest Place in Santa Rosa.”Īn illustrated timeline of Charles Schulz's life. Unlike a lot of artists, he didn’t hole up in a studio somewhere, a creative hermit. The unassailably cool Snoopy became a sort of cult mascot among US soldiers in the Vietnam War, emblazoned on equipment, patches and banners a little bit of Minnesota, to comfort them in hell.Though he was born and largely raised in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, Schulz settled in Sonoma County in the 1960s and became a fixture of Santa Rosa’s civic life. Schulz drew Peanuts during some turbulent decades in America, marked by the Korean War (1950-3) the Vietnam War (America entered in 1965 and the war ended in 1975) the Cold War the constant clashes associated with the Civil Rights movement the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Dr Martin Luther King Jr. However, one could argue that the endless improvisations of jazz music make it a perfect fit for the indeterminacies of the Schulz universe. Incidentally, the innovative soundtrack of Charlie Brown Christmas included a lot of jazz by the Vince Guaraldi Trio. But at the same time, the story ends with the Peanuts coming together to transform a scrawny fir tree into a glorious Christmas tree through friendship. In response, the film manages to pull off a touching reading by Linus from the King James Bible.

Charlie is struggling with the meaning of Christmas and wonders if it merely amounts to selfishness and crass commercialism.

It exemplifies the bittersweet tension between religious feeling and existentialism, connectedness and alienation in his work. A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) is probably Schulz’s masterpiece for television.

Snoopy charles schulz museum