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Peanuts has a tried and true Halloween tradition with its comic strips and animated special about the Great Pumpkin, which comes with the other Halloween tradition of Linus being disappointed about the Great Pumpkin's no-show every single year. The Great Pumpkin debuted in October 1959, and not one year since its inception has it appeared to Linus by the time the strip came to its end in 2000.
Linus tends to not take the lack of appearance from his mythological gourd well at all, and he is usually mired in disappointment and, eventually, anger and sadness. Linus has come close to completely giving up hope and belief in the Great Pumpkin. However, he cannot ever seem to just give up once and for all and always ends up believing again. While Linus may have never been able to enjoy a fun night of trick or treating, his way of celebrating Halloween is good enough for him... until the day after when the disappointment sets in.
10 "I'll Never Believe In You Again!"
November 2, 1963
Having finally had enough of being stood up by the Great Pumpkin, Linus is at his breaking point and has lost all patience for this absent gourd. Proclaiming that he will never believe in the Great Pumpkin ever again, he shouts it as loud as he can. However, when he quiets for a minute and thinks it over, he decides it is better to be safe than sorry and takes his denouncement of the Great Pumpkin back, just in case the mythological creature is listening.
Linus would rather not burn his bridges with the Great Pumpkin, walking back his angry outburst, like any faithful reader would expect. Linus would not be Linus if he didn't believe in the Great Pumpkin. His love of the Great Pumpkin and his passing on of the character is so synonymous with Linus that there seems to be slim to no chance of him giving up hope, no matter how mad he gets.
9 "I'm Pretty Tired..."
November 1, 1966
When Linus sends Peppermint Patty a letter about the Great Pumpkin, her interest is piqued, and she has Linus over to tell her all about it. To everyone's surprise, even Linus, she actually believes in the Great Pumpkin after he gives her all the information she needs to know. The major force driving her new belief is that, due to her superstitious personality, she thinks anything that sounds impossible just has to be true.
Peppermint Patty is the only character in Peanuts to wear sandals!
She has odd reasoning, but at the end of the day, she is not the brightest; case in point, she mistook Snoopy for a human child for years. She even admits her less than stellar aptitude herself when she is waiting on Halloween for the Great Pumpkin to show up. Unsurprisingly, Peppermint Patty is very tired the day after, but nothing compared to Linus, who stayed up all night.
8 "Just Wait 'Til Next Year!"
November 1, 1970
After yet another Halloween night spent waiting for the Great Pumpkin, Linus ends up falling asleep in the pumpkin patch. He comes home in the wee hours of the morning where he runs into a very annoyed Lucy. She demands he just curse the Great Pumpkin and move on with his life so he is free to celebrate Halloween through trick or treating and not being confined to a pumpkin patch any longer.
In reply, Linus compares her to the biblical character Job's wife. Linus refuses to curse the Great Pumpkin, yelling that she will be proved wrong next year. The Great Pumpkin showing up next year is a long shot, but Linus is desperate and is champing at the bit to get Lucy off his back so that she might quit egging him on to curse the Great Pumpkin.
7 "Gramma Is Very Uptight"
November 1, 1968
Linus's grandma can be a bit of a wet blanket, pun intended; she despises Linus's beloved security blanket and refuses to tolerate Linus's quest for the Great Pumpkin. On Halloween night, Lucy informs Linus that, since Grandma is babysitting, he needs to come home now, at nine o'clock, and that he needs to stop the Great Pumpkin nonsense. Linus attributes this Great Pumpkin slander to the generation gap, which is probably not as spot-on as he thinks.
In Linus's first two years in the comic strips, he did not speak!
Regardless, as a result, the next day, Linus regales Charlie Brown with his unfortunate tale of events and how his grandma tends to be very uptight when it comes to all things Great Pumpkin related. A kid as eccentric and imaginative as Linus needs a lot of patience and understanding from others, of which Grandma is in very short supply.
6 "Did The Great Squash Ever Show Up?"
November 1, 1973
When Marcie gets to know Linus more, he gives her a detailed account of the Great Pumpkin and what it does. Marcie is not too amused by the made-up character and even asks her best friend Peppermint Patty if she believes in it. Neither girl is swayed in the least, but Marcie, being a good pal, checks in with Linus about if the Great Pumpkin ever showed. However, she makes a major faux-pas and does not call it the Great Pumpkin but rather the Great Squash, insulting and angering Linus like little else could.
It is an easy enough mistake to make, but a grave one to Linus nevertheless. Linus, overall, tends to be pretty levelheaded, but where the Great Pumpkin is concerned, all bets are off. Marcie may have forgotten the name of the Great Pumpkin this time, but after Linus's reaction, she won't in the future.
5 "It Was A Bowling Ball"
November 1, 1982
When Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Marcie, and Peppermint Patty go bowling, things get off to a great start. Charlie Brown is even on track to win against the very competitive Peppermint Patty. However, as Charlie Brown has a habit of doing, he chokes on the last frame needed for him to win, and he accidentally throws his bowling ball out the front door instead of the lane. The bowling ends up in a very interesting place: the pumpkin patch where Linus and Sally are waiting for the Great Pumpkin.
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As this strip illustrates, Linus erroneously thinks that the bowling was the Great Pumpkin, thinking he has finally been thrown a bone on Halloween. There were no winners that night: Charlie Brown self-sabotages his chances of winning, Peppermint Patty bowled a terrible game, and Linus saw yet another Halloween come and go without meeting the Great Pumpkin.
4 "Great Pumpkin, You're Going To Drive Me Crazy!"
November 1, 1961
After Linus has obsessed about making sure that his pumpkin patch was sincere enough for the Great Pumpkin to stop by his patch like it has stopped at many others over the years, he falls asleep when it, surprise, surprise, does not show up. Charlie Brown wakes up Linus, still asleep in the pumpkin patch, with the news that the Great Pumpkin has actually shown itself... to someone else in New Jersey.
Linus, understandably, nearly pops a blood vessel out of anger, making it clear that the Great Pumpkin is going to drive him crazy (too late). Funnily enough, Linus had only been talking about the Great Pumpkin for two years at this point, and he was already being driven to the brink by it. He has decades more to tolerate of the no-shows from the Great Pumpkin even after this comic strip.
3 "Never Even Occurred To You, Did It?
November 1, 1991
Linus, and Charlie Brown, for that matter, assume that Linus's made-up character, the Great Pumpkin, is male. In contrast, Lucy throws out the interesting possibility that the Great Pumpkin is actually female. Posing that question to Linus after he has experienced another year of silence from his gift-giving pumpkin creature, Lucy rubs it in by remarking that the thought of the pumpkin being female probably never even crossed his mind.
Lucy does make a very good point.
While the proposition is frustrating for Linus, Lucy does make a very good point. However, considering that Linus is the one who made up the character in his own mind, he likely knows a bit more about any details of the Great Pumpkin than Lucy. Given that Lucy is an eldest child, she likes to think she always has the answers, even when it comes to mythological creatures, much to her little brother's chagrin.
2 "If I Sound Bitter, It's Because I Am"
November 2, 1964
When Linus makes a big fuss about the Great Pumpkin coming, even more so than usual, it is more imperative than ever for the Great Pumpkin to show up. He even writes to the Great Pumpkin to tell it the importance of it showing up this year. All Linus's efforts go to waste another year, though, after the Great Pumpkin fails to be at his pumpkin patch.
Consequently, Linus decides that another letter is called for, albeit one much different in tone than his original. He lets the Great Pumpkin know that he waited, even though the Great Pumpkin never came, but that he can handle disappointment because he is still young - even if he is still angry. Finishing with a cherry on top, Linus acknowledges that he may sound bitter, but that's only because he definitely is bitter.
1 "You Owe Me Restitution!"
November 3, 1962
Providing the basis of the adored animated TV special, It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, the Halloween (and some of November's) comic strips have a storyline that is somewhat replicated in the television special. When Sally sits out Halloween to wait in the pumpkin patch with Linus so that he can prove to her that the Great Pumpkin is real, things do not go the way he wishes. Rather, Sally misses out on a kid's favorite holiday, Halloween, all to wait for a gourd to never show.
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Sally is furious, both at Linus and at herself for going along with it all, and details all the things that she missed out on, specifically treats. Tallying up what she didn't get to have - like candy and even money - Sally decides that some restitution is in order when she delivers her iconic line that fans of the animated Peanuts special know by heart.
Peanuts
Created by Charles M. Schulz, Peanuts is a multimedia franchise that began as a comic strip in the 1950s and eventually expanded to include films and a television series. Peanuts follows the daily adventures of the Peanuts gang, with Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy at the center of them. Aside from the film released in 2015, the franchise also has several Holiday specials that air regularly on U.S. Television during their appropriate seasons.
Created by Charles M. Schulz
English (US) ·