31 Nights of Halloween Horror - It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown
25 mins.
Dir. Bill Melendez
1966/USA


Let's take a break from all the horror for a second and talk about Halloween itself.  While today's generation has a lot of advantages, they also have missed out on a ton of great stuff,  One of those is the excitement of watching a cartoon special in the evening specifically about a holiday.  These were events back in the day.  No matter what was going on, your ass made sure it was planted in front of the TV at 8 pm to see the "A CBS Special Presentation" logo spiral on your screen.  You knew you were in for some good shit when that happened, and for a half hour you couldn't have been happier.

We have all seen this show countless times, no need to explain the story, I am sure some of you even still watch it every Halloween.  A shame that after 54 years, celebrating the great pumpkin is not a thing and Halloween isn't an official holiday where you have the day off.  I blame the fat man in the red suit and his followers, they are afraid of being number 2.  I believe though, and I always buy my wife a gift or card on Halloween.  Other than Linus and Sally who spent the night in the pumpkin patch, how great of a Halloween did the Peanuts gang have?  They went out trick or treating and then went to a party.  I wish every Halloween was that awesome.  And no parents anywhere in sight.  Kids go out trick or treating by themselves, Linus falls asleep all night in the pumpkin patch and nobody gives a shit, police aren't out looking or anything. Lucy just gets up at 4am, walks out and goes to get him and brings him home.  No big deal.


I love Halloween, not just the scary movies, but feel of the time of year and every single decoration that goes with it.  Wether it is fallen leaves, cut out decorations or a good horror movie. I soak it all in,  Since we are all at that point now where we hold dearly onto nostalgia, it's the simple things I remember as a kid too that made me love Halloween, and that includes cartoons.  I will watch any cartoon dealing with Halloween, and believe me I sat through a Winnie the Pooh one recently and that was god damn painful.  So while we are all wrapped up in horror movies, more so this time of year than nay other, let's all appreciate the holiday itself and resurrect the Great Pumpkin.  We now return to our regularly scheduled program.






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