A pop cultural myth has just turned 65 – a ‘legendary’ figure who existed only in the imagination of a fictional character. It was on 26 October 1959 that readers of the Peanuts newspaper strip were introduced to a character who would never appear in person, but whose yearly no-shows became an event much anticipated by those who followed the adventures of Charlie Brown and friends.
In the Peanuts strip of 26.10.59, Linus is seen writing a letter not to Santa Claus but to the ‘Great Pumpkin’, a Halloween legend whom he imagines will rise up from the Pumpkin patch and deliver toys to all the good children of the world. Over the coming week, he eagerly anticipates the Great Pumpkin’s arrival: one strip sees him suggesting to his sister Lucy that the gang should all go out singing ‘Pumpkin Carols’, whilst in another he waxes lyrical to Charlie Brown about this season of goodwill. The following year it was all played out again, with new variations. By 1966, with the TV special ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’, Linus’ fixation had arguably become a minor icon of pop culture. The Great Pumpkin was, of course, a delusion, deriving only from the tradition of using pumpkins to carve Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns. As a concept it originated in the mind of Charles Schulz and his creation Linus.
Part of Schulz’ working method was to look for ideas that he could develop across a week or more of daily strips, creating mini-serials with storylines that evolved from day to day. Many such examples involved the sparring relationship between siblings Linus and Lucy Van Pelt. Introduced as a toddler, by the late 50s Linus had become the ‘soul’ of the strip, much given to philosophical and theological ponderings, but also prone to delusional ideas and liable to become a nervous wreck were he ever separated from his famous ‘security blanket’.
On 26 October 1959, Schulz began a mini-serial that would run and run as he explored the many aspects of Linus’ unfounded belief in the Great Pumpkin. It was never explained how or where Linus conceived of the idea: it emerged fully formed in his child’s imagination, and he expressed surprise when others failed to share in his belief.
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| Linus introduces Lucy to the concept of the Great Pumpkin (26.10.59) |
By the second year of the saga, Linus had convinced Charlie Brown to spend Halloween in the pumpkin patch, to await the Great Pumpkin’s arrival. This strip laid out one fundamental tenet of Linus’ Halloween credo, namely that the Great Pumpkin would appear only in a pumpkin patch he deemed to be ‘sincere’: a ‘small, homey’ kind of pumpkin patch as opposed to a large, commercial endeavour. On this occasion, Linus faints at the sight of what he imagines to be the Great Pumpkin (it is, in fact, Snoopy), and goes away contented, wishing the Great Pumpkin a safe journey. But in future years he and others were to be eternally disappointed. Charlie Brown’s sister Sally is especially put out when she too spends the night in the pumpkin patch, thereby missing all the fun of Halloween.
When I first read the Peanuts strips in the late 1960s, I was intrigued by the emphasis placed on Halloween, and the tradition of ‘trick or treat’ which was, at that time, unheard of in England. The practice of ‘guising’ – children in costume going from door to door in hope of receiving food or coins – was popular in Scotland and Ireland and is recorded as far back as 1895, but ‘trick or treat’ was certainly not a part of my childhood growing up in England. That’s not to say that we didn’t have Halloween traditions. Apple-bobbing was familiar to me, and I can remember Blue Peter making paper lanterns and suchlike. Our mother grew up in rural Ireland in the early 20th century and was familiar with many Halloween traditions including the carved Jack-o-Lantern, traditionally a turnip.
I know. A turnip. Baldrick would have been in his element. As to pumpkins, great or otherwise, you couldn’t even get hold of them, certainly not in the prodigious quantities one sees today. Back in the 60s and early 70s, you could certainly buy a certain amount of Halloween merchandise, mostly in the form of papier maché monster masks. But for English children, Halloween was eclipsed by bonfire night, and the big push in seasonal merchandising was very much aimed at the Guy Fawkes crowd. In place of trick or treat, we had ‘penny for the Guy’, with the stuffed effigy of Fawkes, destined for the top of the bonfire, being wheeled around the streets in an old pram by children hopeful of earning some small change with which to buy fireworks.
Banning the sale of fireworks to under-18s provided an incentive to merchandisers to shift focus away from Guy Fawkes, and the past thirty years has seen a veritable glut of seasonal promotions aimed at Halloween revellers: I’ve seen everything from chocolates to electric guitars given a seasonal promotional spin with spooky overtones. We’ve also seen the acceptance of a new Halloween iconography, strongly featuring the colours orange and black (and to a lesser extent, purple). As a designer, I began to notice this trend as it emerged a couple of decades ago. Now, any and every product aimed at children is liable to be given a ghoulish makeover, with Halloween merchandise hitting the shelves from mid September onwards. It is also practically impossible to set foot in any pub – particularly those aimed at a family clientele – without being asssulted on all sides by ghosts, skeletons, huge spiders, vampires and all the other impedimenta of horror movie cliché. Shop windows – even those of relatively restrained enterprises such as accountants and jewellers – are also similarly bedecked. Yet this is only a relatively recent development.
My diary entry for Monday 31 October 1988 makes mention of ‘silly things in pub – decorations, masks etc.’ This was the first time I’d seen anything like this, and is an early indicator of the growing trend towards Halloween décor in public places. The pumpkin iconography had not yet developed to the extent we see today, but pumpkins themselves were slowly becoming easier to obtain; and one now started to see groups of kids in horror garb going from door to door doing trick or treat.
The question I wanted to address in this blog was simple: how much, if indeed any of this focus on Halloween – trick or treat in particular – can be laid at the doorstep of Charlie Brown? The Peanuts strip had been a regular feature of the Daily Sketch (latterly the Daily Mail) since the 1950s, and from the early 70s onwards, character merchandising had seen the iconography extend into such arenas as greetings cards and gifts. But not Pumpkin cards. The Charlie Brown Halloween special was first broadcast by the BBC, with no regard for seasonal continuity, in February 1976, with similarly mistimed repeats in September 1982 and December 1984. The latter two broadcasts may have helped to promote the idea of trick or treat in the minds of young viewers, but other US imports (including an entire film franchise) have played their part in popularising American seasonal traditions at the expense of our own.
Over in America, the merchandising and gifting industries needed no inspiration from Linus, Charlie Brown or the mythical Great Pumpkin. Schulz must have thought it a great joke to portray Linus addressing ‘Pumpkin cards’ but Halloween cards had been around for decades, having originated in the 1890s. Trick or treat, however, was a much more recent arrival, evolving from the earlier practise of ‘guising’ and emerging initially in central Canada, before spreading across the United States during the 1930s (the earliest recorded example was in 1917). The Peanuts strip certainly played its part in promoting the tradition, with the earliest references occurring in 1951, before Linus was even conceived; but rather than Charlie Brown, Wikipedia cites the film ET as having done the heavy lifting of introducing the trick or treat concept to a generation of British children.
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| Charlie Brown goes trick or treating, but typically, he's a day late (01.11.51) |
Linus’ misplaced faith in the Great Pumpkin has been the subject of various existential and theological interpretations. In one of the earliest strips, he reproaches himself for having been ‘the victim of false doctine.’ There was a lot to play with here, as Schulz quickly recognised. Yet the inspiration for the first Great Pumpkin serial was simply the humour to be derived from a child’s confusing the traditions of Halloween with those of Christmas. Year after year saw Linus return to the pumpkin patch in the hope that his sincerity would be repaid. Was Schulz secretly hoping to persuade real life children to take up this fake tradition? Or was he encouraging us to examine the way we buy unquestioningly into systems of belief? Had the internet been available in Linus’ day, he would have had no trouble recruiting converts to his cause. There are a lot more unlikely things online today than a flying, anthropomorphic pumpkin with a sack of toys, and people seem prepared to believe in them.
Maybe the Great Pumpkin is among us already. If so, he’ll have to be orange, occupy a privileged position, and have the power of convincing the media to believe in his false doctrine. He may not arrive in time for Halloween, but I’d advise anyone in the USA to check their pumpkin patch on the night of November 5th...
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