There's Only One Weekend When You Can Watch 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown' for Free

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Families love to come up with different holiday traditions, doing the same beloved rituals year after year, and Halloween is no exception. And for some families, Halloween means Peanuts — specifically gathering around the TV and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown together. And why not? It is one of the greatest family-friendly Halloween movies of all time! If you count yourselves among the Snoopy fans, here's where to tune in.

Where can I watch It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown in 2023?

There really is only one destination for It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown: Apple TV+ has the rights to all the Peanuts specials, including Great Pumpkin. On one hand, having a home on a streaming service is good because you can sit down and watch it whenever you're all available — no more rushing through dinner to make sure you're seated around the TV on time. On the other hand, well, you have to be an Apple TV+ subscriber to be able to see it.

The same goes for all the Peanuts holiday specials, including A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Happy New Year Charlie Brown, For Auld Lang Syne and others, in addition to shows like Snoopy in Space and The Snoopy Show. If you're in a family of Peanuts superfans, it could be worth it to subscribe.

If you don't have an Apple TV+ subscription, antoher guaranteed way to watch is through old-fashioned physical media. If you buy The Peanuts Holiday Collection — now available on 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray in addition to DVD — you can watch whenever you want. It doesn't matter who has the rights, so long as you have your DVD or Blu-ray player. You never again have to check the streaming sites or TV listings.

Is It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown going to air on TV this year?

In the past, PBS and Apple TV+ had struck a deal that allowed PBS and PBS kids to air the special on TV one or two nights during the Halloween season. Sadly, no deal like that came together last year. No announcements have been made for 2023, so it wouldn't be a good bet.

Is there any way to see the Great Pumpkin for free without subscribing to Apple TV+?

If you don't subscribe to Apple TV+ and have no plans to join, all is not necessarily lost. Apple TV+ is generously making It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown available to stream for free to non-subscribers from Saturday, October 21 to Sunday, October 22. (But how many times in a row can you watch it before the window closes?) It'll do the same for the other holiday specials, with a schedule that looks like this:

• It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown streams for free Saturday, October 21 to Sunday, October 22.

• A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, streams for free Saturday, November 18 to Sunday, November 19.

• A Charlie Brown Christmas stream for free Saturday, December 16 to Sunday, December 17.

Mark those calendars now!

Is It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown available to rent anywhere else?

With most movies, even if you can't stream them for free, you can find a way to buy or rent them through services like Amazon Prime Video. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case with Great Pumpkin.

It's not going to be available on Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video or Vudu (though those services have their own Halloween offerings that are worth checking out especially Disney+, Netflix and Hulu).

Of course, the streaming landscape being what it is nowadays, this can always change. As more and more streaming services pop up, and rights to different movies and shows bounce from one to the other — has anyone else noticed how the Harry Potter movies keep going back and forth between HBO Max and Peacock? — the only certain thing is that nothing stays in one place forever. There's no harm in checking — the worst that will happen is you'll end up saying, "I got a rock."

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