Peanuts join snowman-building leagues and criticize Charlie Brown when he insists on building his own snowmen without leagues or coaches. "Peanuts" touched on religious themes on many occasions, most notably the classic television special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" in 1965, which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible (Luke 2:8–14) to explain to Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about (in personal interviews, Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side). Because of the explicit religious material in "A Charlie Brown Christmas", many have interpreted Schulz' work as having a distinct Christian theme, though
What a Cartoon! became the first spin-off of "What a Cartoon!" in 1996. Two more series based on shorts, "Johnny Bravo" and "Cow and Chicken", premiered in 1997, and "The Powerpuff Girls" became a weekly half-hour show in 1998. "Courage the Cowardly Dog" (spun off from the Oscar-nominated short "The Chicken from Outer Space") followed as the final spin-off in 1999. In addition, the "Cow and Chicken" short "I Am Weasel" eventually was also spun off into a separate series: in all, six cartoon series were ultimately launched by the "What a Cartoon!" project, any one of which earned enough money for the