I don’t mean Charles Schulz. I mean, within the world of the Peanuts?
The kids are, what, eight? They’ve been “tricks or treating” for only about half that, but Linus’ belief in the GP seems deeply rooted. He misses it “every year”, according to the gang. So it must go back almost to his earliest memories.
So where did this belief come from? Did he create it from scratch, probably some cross-circuit in his not fully formed brain transposed Santa into the GP? Or did his dad tell him this tale for some strange reason, and it stuck?
And, while I was looking for that strip, I found a whole lot more GP-themed strips that I’d forgotten. I think they should make another special, maybe even two more, using some of that material. And alternate them, but don’t say ahead of time which one is being shown this year.
I would interpret that Charlie Brown was trying to make Linus feel better, or at any rate less foolish, and made that GP sighting story up as a means of conveying ‘see, you’re not crazy’
From everything Schulz ever said about it, it seems that the Great Pumpkin did indeed emerge from Linus getting confused about his holiday traditions. Strange, since Linus is usually the most well-informed of the gang.
Does anyone else in Peanuts-land believe in the Great Pumpkin? I doubt it. Everyone in the gang makes fun of him for believing it (except Sally, who is too young to know better, and Charlie Brown, who sort of pities him for it). He once blew his chance of being elected class president by devoting one of his campaign speeches to evangelizing for the Great Pumpkin, which resulted in the entire school erupting in laughter.
N.B., I’m speaking here of the original comic strip storyline, not the animated special in which he was elected anyway because his opponent was even more wishy-washy than Charlie Brown! In the strip, Linus lost in a landslide.
As far as this happening “every year,” trying to figure out a workable chronology for Peanuts is a fool’s errand. In the earliest strips, there were clear differences in age between the characters–Patty, Shermy, Violet, and Charlie Brown were about the same age, Schroeder was younger, Lucy was younger still. New kids would be born, be “babies” for awhile, and then age fairly rapidly to about early grade school age, where they would mysteriously stop. At that point, they all settle into a nebulous “the same age” zone, apart from those who are obviously younger siblings, like Linus, Sally, and Rerun.
And don’t even get me started on where Franklin, whose father was explicitly said to be “in Vietnam,” fits into the timeline!
Linus seems to have come up with it on his own. 1956 was Linus’s trick-or-treating debut. He was the one who first had a little trouble with the scissors. He was also hesitant, saying, “I wouldn’t want to do anything that might arouse the FBI!” Then on November 1st, Lucy berated him for getting stage fright: “Boy, what a dope he turned out to be!..He just stood there! He wouldn’t say a word!” In October 1958, Linus announced his ambition to be a fanatic, though he doesn’t specify what he’ll be a fanatic about. That Halloween, Lucy again has to prompt him to ring doorbells (“What if somebody knifes me?!”). October 1959 finds him writing a letter and asking Lucy, “Don’t you know? This is the time of year when we all write to the Great Pumpkin!” So it looks like an alternative he came up with, because canvassing the neighborhood was intimidating.
ETA: When CB scoffs at the Great Pumpkin, Linus’s counter-argument is that CB still believes in Santa. The counter-argument should be that CB believes that Joe Shlabotnik will someday be in the Hall of Fame, or play in the World Series, or even hit a home run. Talk about delusional…
You’re overthinking this. It doesn’t matter in the slightest, so any explanation is made in a complete vacuum. You can choose any origin you want.
However, the true story is that it was told to him by a mysterious man in a white panel truck who told Linus the story before he molested him. That’s why no one talks about it.
BTW, if you want to see clever speculation on Peanuts, look for the play Dog Sees God, which delves into the Peanuts gang as teenagers. If you think my story was dark, it’s nothing compared to that.
Snoopy is dead, having contracted rabies and killed Woodstock. Linus is a pothead. Schroeder is bulled for being gay. Pigpen is a psycho. Patty and Marcie are vapid party girls. Lucy is in a mental institution for setting the little red-haired girl’s hair on fire. And Charlie Brown is trying to make sense of it all.
I think Snoopy believes in the Great Pumpkin, too, though he isn’t saying anything. And in one of the recently-rerun strips in my hometown paper, one of the girls speculates on the possibility that the Great Pumpkin and the Head Beagle might be the same entity, which doesn’t seem to be consistent with disbelieving in the existence of the Great Pumpkin (especially since she had already interacted in some way with the Head Beagle).
The Head Beagle’s existence is a bit nebulous as well. In one storyline, Snoopy is called before the Head Beagle for failing to chase the required number of rabbits (as reported by Frieda, that naturally curly-haired tattletale!). Dressed all in black to face his doom, Snoopy reports to the appointed place, only to find no one there. The punchline: “Suddenly I have the awful feeling that somebody is putting me on!”
On the other hand, Snoopy himself once became Head Beagle (Lucy’s prediction: “He’ll bring ruination to the country!”). He fled to Peppermint Patty’s house because he couldn’t cope with the paperwork. And also because he couldn’t pronounce “Pekingese.”
Or does this suggest that during his brief term in office as Head Beagle, Snoopy was also the Great Pumpkin?
Yeah, that’s the storyline that I was referring to (I couldn’t remember Frieda’s name). And everyone seems to just take it for granted that Frieda did in fact report Snoopy to the Head Beagle, and holds her in low regard for it. It seems like she’d have offered “The Head Beagle doesn’t exist; I just made him up” as a defense, if it were true.
To me it’s pretty clear that the Great Pumpkin exists outside of Linus and the usual Peanuts gang.
Documented sightings include Halloween night in 1959 when the Great Pumpkin appeared in the pumpkin patch of Boots Rutman of Connecticut and in 1960 when the Great Pumpkin appeared in the pumpkin patch of R.W. Daniels of Texas.
In an interview I once read, Schulz said something like “Linus is bright but very innocent” and somehow got his holidays confused.
The dialogue in the TV show was pretty much taken directly from the strip. Sally’s year-neutral “Welcome to the twentieth century!” (which has itself become dated) was originally “Welcome to 1963!”
Possibly, however, the Head Beagle is a pre-existing legend that Frieda has fallen for. Snoopy seems to believe it as well, but the fact remains, the Head Beagle doesn’t show up.
He has that in common with the Great Pumpkin, for what it’s worth!
Another possibility is that the incumbent Head Beagle at the time, like Snoopy later, found the job too much of a hassle and just quit. It may be that Head Beagle is one of those thankless jobs that might look good on your resume, but are a pain in the behind to actually do.
Full disclosure that I’m not really advocating that the Great Pumpkin isn’t something strictly out of Linus’ imagination. But that said, Linus does seem to be citing documented appearances in the Sunday strip I quietly linked to previously. It’s easily legible when I view it, but I don’t doubt that it’s not displaying the same way for you. It’s a 10-panel (plus title panel) Peanuts comic that includes the following dialogue:
Linus (Panel 2): ON HALLOWEEN NIGHT IN 1959 THE GREAT PUMPKIN APPEARED IN THE PUMPKIN PATCH OF BOOTS RUTMAN OF CONNECTICUT…
Linus (Panel 3): IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME, LOOK IN THE RECORD!
Linus (Panel 4): IN 1960 THE GREAT PUMPKIN APPEARED IN THE PUMPKIN PATCH OF R.W. DANIELS OF TEXAS…
Linus (Panel 5): AGAIN I SAY, IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE ME, LOOK IN THE RECORD!
I’ve typed up the full exchange, but being mindful of SDMB rules on reproducing copyrighted works, I’ll put the full text off-board here.
Doesn’t he? Snoopy returns frazzled because “that’s the way you always look when you return from having appeared before the Head Beagle,” and the next day notes that the HB was “very understanding.”
Clearly, Snoopy (as he all but admits) is looking frazzled not out of genuine emotion, but because that’s just what one does. He’s merely going through the motions, performing his designated role in this little pantomime. By the same token, the Head Beagle being “very understanding” is a euphemism for his not even being present at all. How much more understanding could he be than to ignore Snoopy’s summons entirely?
I lean more and more toward the notion that being HB is something that no one really wants to do, and thus it gets foisted on the guy who didn’t show up for the meeting. You know, the old “Be There or Be Elected” thing that got me onto more college alumni committees than I care to remember. No wonder everyone who holds the office turns out to be a slacker.
That’s only on TV, and even then, there is at least one TV special (“Play it Again, Charlie Brown” - one of the few not based on anything in the strips, IIRC) where you can hear an adult voice. In the strips, adults talk normally, although the only two I can think of off the top of my head are Charlie Brown’s mother and Linus and Lucy’s grandmother.
As for The Great Pumpkin, I remember a strip where Charlie Brown suggests to Linus that he stop talking about the Great Pumpkin, and Linus responds along the lines of, he’ll consider it when Charlie Brown stops talking about Santa Claus, so I don’t think it’s really a question of Linus “getting the two mixed up.” Besides, Linus also believes in the Easter Beagle, and he really did show up.
