I was asked what I like to watch for Halloween, what scares me and what do I watch to be scared, and I had to think about it because I usually don’t watch anything for Halloween, I don’t like being, and I don’t like the horror genre (except with notable exceptions that I’ve written about here). While the rest participate in this pagan bacchanal, I spend my evening trying to make the neighborhood kids think this house is inhabited by no one, and it’s not because I’m a boor, it’s just I never celebrated it as a kid…
…except for one special tradition: watching a very famous special of a very innocent TV show and I watch every year and never told anybody why, I, who have so many opinions on everybody else’s cinematic traditions (Die Hard is NOT a Christmas movie) wouldn’t reveal my Halloween tradition. The reason is because…it’s very personal.
I grew up in a religious household wherein my mother thought any display of Halloween would someday make us throw our babies to Baal—It was like fate was a cruel P.E. Coach “Everyone who’s going to create fond memories of childhood and enjoy a horde of free candy, blissfully savored for months, step forward!–Not so fast, Bart.”
My Mom was and is a good Mom. She didn’t want us to feel left out. One year she decided that depriving us of this annual gorge was cruel—the boys just wanted candy, I’ll get them candy, I just can’t let them invite demons into our house by allowing them to solicit sweets from the neighbors dressed as Abe Lincoln.
So Mom bought us candy—and not a little bit—like, bulk packs, and since we couldn’t participate in the pagan tradition of Trick-or-treat, we all hunkered in her bedroom, the house dark, munching, watching the, well, the one thing we could:
…. I don’t think my Mom knew the significance of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, because if she did, we’d end up gobbling bulk Twix bars to old re-runs of Dr. Who (the one with the ‘fro is the best, all others are posers, disagree, and I’ll cut you!).
I was the oldest son, and I am still the holder of the clearest memories of those Halloweens, or as my mother called it: Just Be Quiet And Watch TV in The Dark While I Pray on the Phone…
…o-ween.
You know the story, while Charlie and his doomed costume go trick-or-treating, but Linus stays in the pumpkin patch, waiting for the return of the Great Pumpkin, who is sure to chose his patch as the noblest and most sincere. He convinces Sally of the story, and she stays with him, foregoing trick-or -treat. In the end the Great Pumpkin does not arrive, but Linus remains faithful, Linus knows it’s true, maybe it was vanity to think his pumpkin patch was most sincere, maybe he didn’t understand the concept of sincerity, at least, perhaps, not as it applies to seasonal gourds. He should consult his Bollinger—not to worry, there’s always next year, you take one step toward the Great Pumpkin, and he takes two towards you.
See, we were Linus. Alone and unrewarded every year, because of a floating something my mother said was up there. The agony of faith, is what that show’s about, the agony and disappointment of the pious man. And we were pious manlettes, eating untricked and store-treated candy, that she was trying to mold.
Every time I see this show I want to cry—but it’s an odd cry—not a nostalgic cry or a melancholy cry, it’s a weep of understanding.
Pious men are always alone. They are skillful at excuses because to explain fully the nature of their hope is to invite scorn. They are constantly sifting that stuff which makes a ‘faithful’ man, and it is a substance, a substance of things unseen. That was us. That was Linus.
I would eventually become the-boy-in-the-pumpkin-patch, then gradually become not-him, because faith at seven years old is the same ‘substance’ for everybody—Your parents told you to do it, you did it, Your parents told you it was true, it was true. The actual ‘substance’ of faith is collected grain by grain over a lifetime until you have a small handful…and it’s never enough. And in Linus we see this Faith: resolute, unyielding, unwavering—he must have carried six decades of pure piety in that blanket, and though I only managed three decades till I unharnessed my donkey, grabbed my bindle and left the plow to rust—I remember having it. As deeply as he.
So, I watch Linus…and want to cry.
Not for regret…. I know what I’m doin’ (more than most people, that’s for sure)
For sympathy.
There may not be a Great Pumpkin, but I agree with the boy it would be great if there was, just like he tells it—and that the work and the faith of every Linus, who meticulously tends his pumpkin patch, would be rewarded and the scorn from his friends made jewels on his crown.
But…that ain’t how things are. Still, I may understand everybody else, but I love Linus, because I’ve been Linus. Those of you atheistic assholes out there (not merely the atheists, the assholes that run your group—-you know them), can take a walk, if you ain’t Linus you better be Charlie, because if you’re a Lucy I swear by the Great Pumpkin that Christmas is coming early, via a fully-decorated conifer rammed right up your ass!
‘Lotta pent-up aggression towards you people.
My mom should’ve made us watch Dr. Who.
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