Jazzy ‘Charlie Brown Christmas’ is still swinging on after 55 years

The Mendelson family would love to find the envelope where their father, Lee, scribbled some lyrics to jazz musician Vince Guaraldi’s composition “Christmas Time is Here” for an animated TV special featuring the “Peanuts” gang in 1965.

The producer always said it had taken less than half an hour to write, and he likely tossed the scrap of paper away. He was in a rush. Everything was rushed. No one even knew, once the special aired, whether it would ever be seen again.

Instead, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” became an indelible holiday tradition and so, too, has Guaraldi’s music — perhaps even more so.

“Christmas just doesn’t feel like Christmas without hearing that album in the background,” said Derrick Bang, author of the biography “Vince Guaraldi at the Piano.”

The special itself was a bit of an oddity: a cartoon story of the meaning of Christmas soundtracked by a sophisticated, mostly instrumental jazz trio of piano, bass and drum.

Yet it worked. Guaraldi’s cascading piano evokes both motion and lightly falling snow on “Skating.” The driving melody of “Linus and Lucy” is the eternal backdrop to a swinging party. “O Tannenbaum” shifts from the traditional carol to a bass-driven groove. A children’s choir adds charm to “Christmas Time is Here.”

The soundtrack has sold more than five million copies. Its nostalgia-fueled popularity has only grown, getting a crucial boost in 1998 when Starbucks began selling it in stores, and fed steadily by new products.

The latest, a box set of outtakes released this year, came when Jason Mendelson, one of the late producer’s four