Who Wrote the Music to the Peanuts/Charlie Brown Christmas Specials? For fifty years, Charles Monroe Schulz (November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) drew the "Peanuts" comic strip. "Peanuts" first appeared in American newspapers in 1950. Schulz's famous "Peanuts" characters were virtually all children and animals: Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus, Snoopy,