A few days before Halloween in 1966, Americans who were charmed by the animated special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” the previous year were given a different narrative focus to learn about conviction. Linus Van Pelt, a unique boy and wise friend to the hapless Charlie Brown, gets his moment in the (autumnal) sun in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
What captures Linus’ imagination during our spookiest holiday season is a Santa Claus-like darkling creature known as the Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin flies around the world leaving presents in pumpkin patches for his staunchest believers. The key, according to Linus, is to locate a patch of the utmost sincerity.
Most of us know how this goes. Linus spends Halloween night in the pumpkin patch with Sally Brown, who has a crush on him, while the other kids are off at a party and trick-or-treating. The Great Pumpkin doesn’t show, and eventually, a freezing Linus is fetched back home by his sister Lucy and put to bed.
Linus is an exemplar of sincerity who numbers among our wisest figures in popular culture because of his realness. Linus doesn’t perform. He believes and tries to understand, realizing faith is both ineffable and as tangible as the beating of one’s heart.
How often are we our unfettered selves? How often do we say and do things just for a desired outcome?
For Linus, the Great Pumpkin is less about toys and more about being true to one’s self. Halloween is treated as his blind spot, the day each year this Socrates of the gang makes a fool of himself and misses out on treats. Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s jape-loving beagle, goes so far as to prank Linus and Sally in the pumpkin patch by acting as if he’s the Great Pumpkin by rising from the tangle of vines.
And yet, Linus keeps going back, seemingly unconcerned with what others think. This is someone with passions. Interests. Linus would be wholly unaffected by an algorithm. How many of us now take our cues from what is pushed into our faces and talk about what others talk about?
There is peace in Linus’ pumpkin patch, living as a lover of Halloween, for reasons likely different from most people’s. He has stripped himself of performative excess and is only himself.
I rate Linus as hero-like. Heroes inspire us to more richly be ourselves, to work to know ourselves better so we can be for others what a hero has been for us. Sally Brown likely wouldn’t feel this way come Nov. 1, but she has her own reasons to be in that pumpkin patch, whereas Linus sees her as someone with whom to share his enthusiasm.
That’s how connection happens. Two people are themselves together without reservations and agendas. There aren’t many people out there essentially “pulling a Linus.”
Charlie Brown does his version of this, which is why the two are tight. Their conversations now resonate as almost shockingly frank. They get right into the depths of their feelings. They admit to fears and weakness. Linus would never tell us he is living his best life; he’d actually be busy living. And sure, sometimes that involves freezing his rear end off in a pumpkin patch.
But we know sincerity when we see it, and we admire the person who embodies it, even if we struggle to do so. All the more reason to try locating that Great Pumpkin-worthy patch inside of ourselves this year. As Linus seems to know, there’s more than one way for the great gourd to pay a visit.
The question is: Are you going to be there?
Colin Fleming is the author of “Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,” an entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series.
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