Sixty Years of the Great Pumpkin

Six decades ago this week, one brave boy stood up against his peers to advocate for a new way of celebrating Halloween. He waited patiently in an expansive gourd patch with only his blanket and would-be girlfriend to keep him company. And although his mission didn’t pan out, it became the stuff of legend. This is the tale of the Great Pumpkin.

1. Starting in the Strips

As most people know, Charlie Brown and the gang met the world in 1950 with the debut of the Peanuts comic strip by Charles M. Schulz. A monument of the form, Peanuts would run for 50 years and a staggering 17,897 published strips. By itself, it was hugely successful. But 15 years in, the characters would make a leap to animation.

2. Christmastime Is Here

The popularity of Peanuts in the strips did not go unnoticed by another monolithic American brand. The Coca-Cola Company, whose images of Santa Claus and various multimedia ads made them a holiday staple, took the step of both commissioning and sponsoring a Peanuts animated special. Schulz himself wrote it; he was joined by executive producer Lee Mendelson and director/producer Bill Melendez. Jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi came aboard for the score. A Charlie Brown Christmas debuted on CBS on December 9, 1965. A wild success in both terms of ratings and artistry (it won an Emmy and a Peabody Award), the show became a holiday staple while launching a run of 53 (and counting) TV and/or streaming specials. A Charlie Brown Christmas ran on CBS until 2019; Apple TV obtained the rights to Peanuts programs in October of 2020, and the specials now appear there.

3. The Third Is the Second

When is #3 actually #2? When it’s the second-most popular! The second produced Peanuts special, 1966’s Charlie Brown’s All-Stars! leaned into the original strips’ fan-favorite baseball plotlines. But the specials turned back to the holidays just a few months later when It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown arrived. Co-written again by Schulz (who actually wrote or co-wrote 39 of the specials and four of the feature films), Pumpkin focused largely on Linus’s plan to meet the legendary Great Pumpkin in the pumpkin patch, eschewing the other kids’ trick-or-treating adventure. Sally joins him (while Snoopy takes an interesting detour into his World War I adventures, including a duel with the Red Baron). And while historically it’s been regarded as the second-most popular special after A Charlie Brown Christmas, it’s 2003 airing drew 13.2 million viewers, making it the most watched holiday special of that decade.

4. It’s a Landmark

The original 1966 CBS promo for It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. (Uploaded to YouTube by Laser Time)

Although there had been Halloween-themed episodes of ongoing series by 1966 (with the first widely considered to be the “Halloween Party” episode of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet from 1952), It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was the first significant Halloween “special” on broadcast TV. Its success led to a tide of Halloween specials featuring various characters (everyone from Fat Albert to Garfield to Saturday Night Live character David S. Pumpkins) and contributed to the rise of Halloween episodes of ongoing series. It’s even been suggested in books like Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography by David Michaelis that the special propagated the spread of trick-or-treating and Halloween celebrations in American communities.

5. The Specials Continue

As of July of 2026, there have been 53 Peanuts animated specials. The first 35 aired first on CBS. You’re in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown ran on NBC in 1994. After that, some specials debuted as direct-to-DVD before having televisions airings. Five specials aired on ABC in 2000s, with one, Happiness Is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown, running on Fox in 2011. Since 2021, new specials, of which there have been 8, run on Apple TV.