In 1966, CBS debuted the now-classic television special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. In it, all the kids in the Peanuts gang take part in typical Halloween activities, including trick-or-treating and pumpkin-carving — except for Linus. Instead, Linus is preparing for the arrival of a mythical being known as the “Great Pumpkin.”
As Linus explains, “Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere,” then he distributes toys to the children waiting for him. Linus spends the special writing letters to the Great Pumpkin and trying to convince others of its existence. Then he spends Halloween night in a pumpkin patch, awaiting the Great Pumpkin’s arrival. Of course, the Great Pumpkin never emerges, but Linus still vows to wait again next year.
To the casual Peanuts fan, that may be all they ever know of Linus and the Great Pumpkin, but dedicated readers of the Peanuts comic strip know there’s much, much more to the story.
The Great Pumpkin was first mentioned in a Peanuts comic on Oct. 26, 1959. In it, Linus is writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin when Lucy asks, “What in the world are you doing?” In reply, Linus says, “Don’t you know? This is the time of year when we all write to the ‘Great Pumpkin’ and tell him what we want for Halloween. The ‘Great Pumpkin’ loves little children. I can see him now, rising up out of the pumpkin patch with his big bag of toys!” Meanwhile, Lucy just stares at him, dumbfounded.
The very next day, Charles Schulz released a similar strip with Linus again chattering on about the Great Pumpkin, while Charlie Brown stares blankly at him.
There are a few more strips where people just stare at Linus in disbelief. Charlie Brown eventually tells him, “You’re crazy.”
Of course, the Great Pumpkin never arises out of the earth to disperse presents. And it certainly doesn’t respond to any letters. Charlie Brown and Lucy even tease Linus about it after Halloween.
For the next few years, Schulz would repeat the pattern. During the last week of October, he’d have Linus write more letters to the Great Pumpkin and preach about the Great Pumpkin’s impending arrival. In 1960, he convinces Charlie Brown to wait in the pumpkin patch with him, and Charlie Brown asks a very good question. “It just occurred to me that there must be ten million pumpkin patches in this country… What makes you think we’re in the right one?”
Then 1961 featured a couple of particularly funny Great Pumpkin comic strips. In this one, Linus cites the recent historical record for Great Pumpkin appearances. “On Halloween night in 1959, the Great Pumpkin appeared in the pumpkin patch of Boots Rutman in Connecticut,” says Linus. He also says, “In 1960, the Great Pumpkin appeared in the pumpkin patch of R.W. Daniels of Texas.” The specificity here is very, very funny, so much so that it surprises me that this wasn’t also used in the TV special, as many of the Great Pumpkin strips predating the special made their way into that script.
Then there’s this one, which is basically the Peanuts equivalent of that Tiger King meme where Joe Exotic says, “I am never gonna financially recover from this.” In the strip, Linus explains to Lucy that he has to believe in the Great Pumpkin, and that he’s already sent out 57 pumpkin cards. Then Linus says, “It would be economically disastrous for me not to believe it!”
I was surprised to find that Linus successfully converts Lucy to Great Pumpkinism in 1962. Lucy even starts her own pumpkin patch in an effort to lure the Great Pumpkin and get a whole bunch of presents. However, Linus tells her that her pumpkin patch is completely hypocritical — most likely because of her greed — which prompts her to give up and just sell her pumpkins instead.
If you go back through the October Peanuts archives and read a bunch of Great Pumpkin comic strips back-to-back, the effect is twofold. For one, for those who have watched the TV special a bunch but haven’t read these strips before, it feels like you’re getting deleted scenes from the special, and it's a lot of fun to see the other ways Linus tries to convince his friends of the Great Pumpkin’s existence and all the different ways they find him to be ridiculous.
The other effect of reading a lot of these strips at once is that Linus feels a bit different. In the special, he seems like he simply has a quirky belief, but the strips make Linus look like he’s an obsessed madman. It makes everything related to the Great Pumpkin that much funnier. This feeling pays off particularly well if you go back and read the entire month of Peanuts comics from October 1964.
Generally, Schulz would do Great Pumpkin-themed strips just a few days before Halloween — maybe one week before, at most — then he would usually take the first day or two of November to show Linus complaining that he’d missed the Great Pumpkin again. But in 1964, he did things a bit differently. On Oct. 5, 1964, Schulz began a multi-week storyline about Linus running for class president. 1964 was an election year, and this was just a month away from the presidential election, so it was a timely storyline for Schulz.
For two weeks straight, pretty much everything in the comic strip was all about Linus’ run for office, and Linus is a very good candidate. He makes powerful, even somewhat revolutionary speeches, which get his classmates all riled up. He keeps on rising in the polls. Linus is all set to win the election, then on Oct. 21, Schulz — and Linus — did something completely unexpected. While making his rousing final speech before the election, Linus talks about the Great Pumpkin, which immediately destroys his run for office.
If the strip is taken on its own, the context is still clear about Linus running for office and how one extreme political position or misstep in a single speech can destroy a candidate’s chances. But the fact that Schulz spent two whole weeks ignoring the Great Pumpkin only to then make it the entire focus in the end is beyond brilliant. It also makes Linus seem downright deranged for his beliefs. The time and patience this took illustrates Schulz’s sheer brilliance as both a storyteller and a joke-teller, which is why it takes the cake — or, maybe, pumpkin pie? — as the greatest Great Pumpkin strip ever.