HOLIDAY CHUCK

I'm sure that I'm not the only person who gets super nostalgic this time of the year. The fall breeze of October is always an indicator that soon the year will end again. But it won't end without much craziness. With October comes a bunch of holidays which, for me, are made extra special only because of one thing: HOLIDAY CHUCK. And I'm not talking about a bottle of ale, or a cold pilsner... (ahahaha) I'm talking about Chuck as in Charlie Brown.

You know the one.

Seriously – ever since I can remember, I would eagerly wait for the time of the year when It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown would come on TV. It came just before Halloween each year. I’d rush through my homework after school, have dinner, then get dressed for bed early enough to plant myself in front of the TV. I’d sit there and wait for that old blurb that pre-ceded all of CBS’s “special” presentations. It used to be the word “SPECIAL” that spun around in an Electric Company-esque way – with this quick-paced song in the background. (Anyone know what I’m talking about?!) Then it would start… Charlie Brown would come on, go through some shit with his friends, put on a suck-ass “costume,” and get rocks when he went trick-or-treating. I caught the same show every year for years… and even in college, I’d try to catch it in my dorm (if I wasn’t running to/from the local bar with my own Peanuts gang). And in that span of a few years where I’d deliberately miss the show due to other pre-Halloween engagements, I hadn’t forgotten the way that show made me feel. Just last year, when I happened to be home the night it came on TV, I caught it and enjoyed just like I was 7 years old again. Same thing would happen in November with A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and then once more in December with A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I don’t know what it is about the whole Peanuts experience. Maybe it’s because we can all identify with at least one of the characters. Sometimes we are all Charlie Browns, and we feel like the world is always against us. At other times we are all Linuses, and although we’ve got all the facts laid out before us, we’re still a little naïve when it comes to tackling life’s deepest mysteries (which end up not being so mysterious after all). Still at other times we’re like Lucy, and are the meanest people on Earth. But most of all, I think we strive to be happy-go-lucky just like Snoopy.

As we come into the holiday season, I hope that we all continue to marvel at these times as wide-eyed children do; like we used to do. I’m all for sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying the ‘Holiday Chuck.’

(Photo from www.danforthnews.com)