Lee Mendelson, the producer who brought the iconic holiday special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” to TV in 1965, passed away at his California home on Christmas day, his son said Friday. The six-time Emmy Award winner died of congestive heart failure at the age of 86, his son, Jason Mendelson, told the AP. Mendelson, who also wrote the lyrics to the show’s main song “Christmas Time Is Here,” produced dozens of projects featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts crew. He led a team with Peanuts author Charles Schulz, director Bill Melendez, and pianist and composer Vince Guaraldi that churned out more than 50 network specials, four films, and several Peanuts projects. But it was “A Charlie Brown Christmas” that has perhaps had the largest impact on the holidays. “It became part of everybody’s Christmas holidays. It was just passed on from generation to generation. ... We got this huge initial audience and never lost them,” Mendelson told the Los Angeles Times in a 2015 interview.