TiVo the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

On Tuesday, October 30th, ABC will air my favorite Halloween treat of all time: It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. If, by some odd stroke of fate, you haven’t seen Charlie Brown collect a bagful of rocks, or Snoopy imagine himself as a flying ace shot down behind German lines, or Linus writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin, you owe it to yourself to fire up that TiVo and tape this forty-year-old classic.

For most of my childhood, I was obsessed with Linus, Lucy, and the rest of the Peanuts gang. I loved Snoopy, of course: what’s not to like about a canine flying ace who can make a mean Thanksgiving feast of toast, popcorn, and jellybeans? Snoopy’s image adorned my lunchbox and my notebooks, appeared on my bed sheets, and graced my favorite t-shirts, bathing suits, and hats. (Oh yes, I was a paragon of fashion back in the day.)

Much as I loved Snoopy, however, I identified with Charlie Brown. To be sure, children’s literature is filled with misfits, from the orphans, heiresses, and invalids of Frances Hodgson Burnett to the tomboyish Harriet the Spy. Charlie Brown, however, was a run-of-the-mill kid just trying to pass math, hit a baseball, and fit in with his classmates, a decent soul whose squareness made him a target of derision (even by his own dog!). Like a lot of other kids, I found solace in Peanuts: I understood Charlie Brown because I, too, was the serious, well-meaning kid that everybody loved to tease.

As an adult reader of Peanuts, I’ve discovered new layers of meaning in the comic bantering of Linus, Charlie Brown, and Lucy. The gang cracks wise about nostalgia, politics, aging, family ties, classical music, and sports in ways that still seem fresh, even if the cultural references (Nehru jackets, anyone?) are a bit stale. The Christmas special, in particular, never ceases to amaze me: how did Schulz ever manage to sneak a scathing critique of commercialism and greed onto network television? And one that dared to suggest that Christmas could be a major downer for some folks? I wonder how he’d react to the recent popularity of the Vince Guaraldi soundtrack, which has become the de rigeur Yuletide music of stores and malls around the country.

If your only knowledge of Peanuts comes from the tie-in products or the TV specials, I encourage you to check out Fantagraphic’s labor-of-love project The Complete Peanuts. Fantagraphics is reproducing every Peanuts strip dating back to 1950, the year Schulz’s comic made its debut. Each volume corresponds to a two-year period; the series has currently reprinted strips from 1950 through 1966, with more than 30 years of comics to come. Part of the fun is seeing how Schulz tinkered with his cast until he got it right: imagine Lucy as a baby, and Snoopy as an ordinary beagle whose biggest worry is whether or not he’ll be fed. (Fun fact: though the strip debuted in 1950, Snoopy didn’t walk upright until 1958.) If you call yourself a comic fan, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Me, I’ll be waiting in the most sincere pumpkin patch until the 1967-68 Complete Peanuts hits the stores. Trick or treat!