Peanuts' Halloween Special Is a Timeless Testament to the Power of Imagination

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown—released on CBS in 1966, now streaming on Apple TV+—was one of the earliest made-for-TV Halloween holiday specials, and has now become an annual viewing tradition for many.

Its enduring success is thanks to a lot of factors, including the wry, witty banter Charles M. Schulz wrote for his Peanuts gang and Vince Guaraldi’s instantly nostalgic music. But beyond the seasonal charm and the adorably sad-sack Charlie Brown moments (his gullible reaction to Lucy and her football, his round head serving as a testing canvas for jack o’ lantern design, his trick-or-treating haul of... rocks), It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is really an exploration of the power of imagination—something that can be fun or frustrating, depending on who’s doing the imagining.

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Only Sally agrees to wait in the pumpkin patch with him, lured in by her crush on Linus even more than his utter confidence that the Great Pumpkin will indeed appear, especially since they’ve picked a spot with “nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see.” When FOMO overtakes her and she ditches him, he sticks it out, fervently clinging to the idea that the Great Pumpkin, who he believes is real based on nothing but his own faith and determination (“if you are a fake, don’t tell me,” he writes in his letter), will suddenly drop by.

The sweetest moment of the special comes when Lucy shows that deep down, she does care about her little brother, and fetches him from his freezing despair at four in the morning (there are no parents, or any adults of the “wah-wah” variety Charlie Brown animation would become known for, in It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown). You might think there’d be a lesson here for Linus to learn about realizing his friends are right, and to rethink his pursuit of this creature that only he believes in (and that, truth be told, he probably dreamed up himself). But It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown lets imagination triumph, whether you’re a dog who likes to pretend he’s a fighter pilot—or, perhaps equally as unlikely, a boy who believes the spirit of Halloween is not only real, but will materialize in a pumpkin patch to reward his biggest fan.

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is streaming on Apple TV+.

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