It now seems hard to believe I used to wear a tie to work every day, and I had two novelty holiday ones to break up the somber assortment of patterned black and blue.  One of those was a Christmas tie, with the Grinch on it.  The other had the Peanuts gang in costumes and standing around in a pumpkin patch.  The back of it had a quote balloon which read, “O, Great Pumpkin, where are you?”

1966’s It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is rightly well-established in the American cultural consciousness.  In my mind, I am never sure if it is superior to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and my ranking seems to change depending upon which holiday is closer.  Given there are a few classic Christmas specials, Pumpkin has a slight edge, as there aren’t any other Halloween specials which approach anywhere near its fame.  Unlike the Great Pumpkin, of which Linus says, “Maybe because you’re number two, you try harder”, this half-hour of classic animation doesn’t have any real competition. 

We have all seen this multiple times, so there is no need to rehash the plot.   I calculate I have seen it at least 40 times.  It was an annual staple on broadcast television when I was a kid, and I never held it in disdain, even in the most cynical years of my late teens and early twenties. 

Each frame is so imprinted in my mind that watching it feels almost superfluous, yet I still continue to do so each year.  And I watch because it simply pleases me to momentarily live in that world, one which is distinctive even for the Peanuts universe.  To paraphrase Sarah Dessen, home is not a place, but a time.

I am always dumbfounded when people seem to think Peanuts is some sort of eternally sunny and idealized world, when it was remarkably cynical for the time.  Charlie Brown never wins a single baseball game, successfully kicks that football or wins the heart of the little red-haired girl.  His life is one of perpetual, unfulfilled yearning.  That all he ends up with after a night of trick or treating is a bag full of rocks in inherently fully, but even more so after one considers those houses bothered to even have rocks ready to hand out.  It seems like the universe is conspiring to make him miserable, and who hasn’t felt that themselves on occasion?

Almost as bad is best friend Linus, the most spiritual of the Peanuts bunch.  Like in Christmas, he is always the first to throw out scripture.  He is also the most book-smart of the bunch, ready with historical information and quotes when needed.  But he also has a strange desire to believe in some fantastic things, whether it is the Easter Beagle or the Great Pumpkin.  Although I foresee a tin foil hat in his future, there is something endearing about somebody so intelligent being consumed by such odd obsessions.  Alas, he would probably be full-on MAGA and a Qanon follower as an adult today.

I find it odd that Snoopy actually fulfills the prophesy of the Easter Beagle’s arrival in that holiday’s special, but his appearance as a false Pumpkin is a rather cruel deception.  That’s not to say it isn’t a hilarious deception, as a beagle in scarf and aviator cap rising out of the field never fails to make me laugh hard enough to be on the brink of tears.  Still, it seems strange to me that the general perception of Snoopy seems to be he is sweet and lovable, when he is largely a jerk, whether it is the pranks he pulls or how he essentially bullies Woodstock, who is allegedly his best friend.  Let’s face it, his exploits can be funny at times, but Snoopy is largely a dick.

A character about whom everybody feels the same is Linus’s sister, Lucy.  While she is essential to the dynamics of the group, nobody ever wants to think the Peanuts character they most closely resemble is her.  I love her audacity while treat or treating, when she asks for a little something extra for her brother, a blockhead who is sitting alone in a pumpkin patch on Halloween.  Perhaps Charlie could try the same bit, and get two rocks at each house, instead of one.  Also, whomever voices Lucy has a great line reading when Charlie’s bald head will be the model for a pumpkin carving, saying, “Turn him around…” as if she’s channeling Edward G. Robinson in gangster mode.

That is at a Halloween party where Lucy and Snoopy have a great instance of their “dog germs” bit which was a recurring gag through out the run of specials.  Snoopy only ends up there because he has spent half of the episode pretending to be a WWI flying ace who has been shot down by the Red Baron.  I used to find that secondary story to be a minor irritation and distraction from what the kids are doing in the main plotline.  Today, I find it equally necessary and interesting how he is just as delusional as Linus, given he can fully immerse himself in various fantasy worlds.  The scene with Snoopy in battle with the Red Baron is a weird, pop-art, cut-up sequence.  When his “plane” (really his doghouse) is supposedly in uncontrolled freefall, there is a looped noise on the soundtrack which I wonder how it was accomplished.  The closest thing I have ever heard to it is the equally bizarre guitar sound from ESG’s “UFO”.

Speaking of music, the score is one of Vince Guaraldi’s best.  Even when listened to outside of the special, it has a melancholy quality suitable not just for the show but also as a soundtrack for autumn.  What some people overlook are the contributions by John Scott Trotter, who composed the almost mournful “Graveyard Theme” which accompanies Snoopy’s imagined journey through the French countryside by moonlight.

The visuals in that are beautiful, especially the watercolor skies.  Similar brushwork provides the black swirls over the pumpkin patch where Linus will once again fail to meet the real Great Pumpkin, instead only seeing Snoopy.

And so we come full circle and, in a way, I like to think each additional year’s viewing of the special is another iteration of the same series of events, the characters doing the same things year after year and somehow believing things will be different this time.  This is even suggested by Linus’s rant during the end credits, that next year will be different, that he’ll find a pumpkin patch that is real sincere.  But the outcome will never be different, and Charlie Brown will never kick that football.  Their world is a microcosm of our own, though we in the real world have our occasional wins.  What is bittersweet is that those never last and, like the dashed hopes of the Peanuts characters, there is a bittersweet beauty to this.