Most people have little rituals that are connected to various holidays. Even if the holidays themselves don’t synch-up depending on nationality, religion, or belief system, there are usually uniting factors within those segments that unite a people. Halloween has its own set of traditions, the strongest of which is the annual veiled threat of children begging for candy or else they will burn your world down around you. Well, assuming that’s what is meant by “trick or treat,” that is.
Unfortunately, some traditions don’t transition well from childhood to adulthood. While it’s technically possible for me to dress up as some character and go door to door asking for candy, it’s universally frowned upon once you can grow facial hair. If a 6-foot dude holding a plastic pumpkin knocks on someone’s door and demands candy, you can safely bet that they’re already hitting the 9 and the 1, and the next 1 is about to get thumbed.
As an adult, we’re forced to create new traditions. Maybe you’re the type that finds a Halloween party where it’s still acceptable to dress up. Or maybe you like to binge watch a ton of horror movies. Maybe you like to stick razors in fun-sized Snickers. Maybe you’re a bastard.
I did the trick or treat thing when I was a kid. While there is unfortunately no photographic evidence, I was the Cookie Monster for two years — googly eyes and everything — and Dracula for one year. One of those outings as the Cookie Monster was a very odd 80-degree Halloween. Imagine being draped head-to-toe in blue fur and candyhandling around a neighborhood in tropical conditions. I lost ten pounds.
I learned early on that Halloween was built for the shy and introverted. In regular clothes, there was no way I’d go house-to-house begging for candy. But as Dracula or the Cookie Monster? Hey, that wasn’t “me” going door to door. That was “him.”
Despite the loss of those times, one annual tradition that hasn’t been rendered socially unacceptable is the yearly viewing of It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I have zero shame in admitting that, as a grown man with all that goes along with the perilous state of “adulthood,” I still take a half hour out of my life each Halloween and revisit some old friends. I do the same on Thanksgiving and Christmas too. And Valentine’s and Easter.
It may seem corny or cheesy (two words I can’t stand, by the way) to refer to animated characters as “friends,” but what other word is there to describe something that has been a part of your life for as long as you can remember? I’m comfortable with the sentiment. I’ve owned this show in every possible format. I had the 45 rpm record and the read-along books, I had the VHS, the DVD, and now the Blu-ray. When none of those were an option, I had network television’s yearly broadcast of the show. Long after I stopped going house-to-house for candy, I could still watch the Charlie Brown special one way or the other.
But don’t mistake a half-hour cartoon for being “kid’s stuff.” It’s pretty evident that lying just on the outskirts of a gently-humored show full of background jazz and simply-drawn kids is the true nature of horror. This is the show that Pinhead and the rest of the Cenobites pull up chairs and watch in between bouts of sado-masochism, nodding gleefully at the methods we construct to torment ourselves.
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is an unrelenting dive into the lowest depths of man’s capacity for cruelty, and one of the bleakest examples of how true horror is found only where absolute hope lives. It is horror in every sense of the word. It is torture-porn for the psyche. And it’s absolutely perfect in every way.
Charles Schulz had a very specific brilliance that lay in the simplicity of moments, and the carefully chosen words that cut through all the societal niceties to express a concise— and often harsh — truth. The most-quoted line of the Halloween special is Charlie Brown’s sorrowful and resigned utterance of “I got a rock.” House after house, this round-headed group of kids plead for candy under the unwritten statutes of the night. And house after house ends with the other kids extolling their acquisitions … except for Charlie Brown. No, this poor round-headed kid, hidden under a hole-besmirched sheet, gets not candy or money or gum or any kind of treat like the other kids — each and every time, he is singled out and given a rock. You can hear this fragile child breaking just a little more with each revelation of stone treat.
It’s brutal.
And as this is happening, we have Linus and Sally. One, a faith-filled child whose fervent wish is to have chosen the exact right pumpkin patch in order to have his dreams fulfilled by some entity called “The Great Pumpkin.” The other, a love-struck young girl who has placed her faith not in pumpkin patches or sincerity, but in the object of her affection, who she can’t possibly believe would let her down.
It’s not spoiling things to disclose that both of them have their worlds shattered by the end of the night. Linus clings to his belief in the Great Pumpkin beyond all reason and only ends up alone and shivering. Sally misses her chance for “tricks or treats” and is left furious and inconsolable at losing out on this rare night due to naïve whims.
Again … brutal.
And Charlie Brown, the supposed hero of our story, ends a night of supposed fun and frivolity with a bag of rocks and constant rejection.
Even Lucy, the arrogant overlord of the night, ends up getting a face-full of dog lips, bringing her triumphant night of dominance, candy-hoarding, and ruthlessness to a bitter close.
Once a year, I watch this gleeful excursion into the darkest heart of man and nod in resigned empathy with the atrocity that lies behind colorful graphic blandishments.
This is my Halloween tradition.