Lucy van Pelt

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown premiered on October 27, 1966. I was in second grade.

Those who didn’t grow up in the 1960s and ’70s will find it hard to comprehend how really special “specials” were in the three-network era. Catching Great Pumpkin (and A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966)) was crucial to the holiday experience. There was no recording it or buying a copy or logging on for anytime viewing. You got to see Linus’s pumpkin patch vigil, and Snoopy’s flying ace exploits, and Charlie Brown’s rock collection, exactly once a year. And if you happened to miss it? Well, you probably felt as cheated as Sally did for missing Violet’s party and “tricks or treats.”

Once a year—yet you somehow managed to learn the dialogue by heart, down to the characters’ endearingly odd inflections, care of the child voice actors. “What’s that? What’s that?” But even after dozens of viewings, I’m still, more than half a century later, discovering things I never noticed before. While watching the broadcast tonight (as the gods of tradition decreed) on PBS, I saw for the first time that at Violet’s party Lucy has traded her witch hat for a starred wizard’s hat. Still red, still conical, but brimless and covered with stars and moons. Magical. How did I ever miss it?