Woodstock hiding inside Snoopy’s ear is a Halloween punchline that doesn’t need a pumpkin patch. In Charles Schulz’s October 31, 1974, Peanuts strip, a 10-word ghost story sends the little bird scrambling for that unlikely shelter. It’s a neat example of what Schulz could do with Halloween beyond Linus’s annual wait: a costume could go wrong, a pumpkin could become a slapstick prop, and trick-or-treating could leave a child thoroughly confused.
The Great Pumpkin understandably takes up much of the conversation. Introduced in 1959, the running joke kept Linus van Pelt waiting every Halloween for almost 40 years for a visitor who never arrived. Polygon compares the setup to Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Each return brought more commitment from Linus, sometimes drawing Sally or Marcie into his cause.
Schulz ran a new Great Pumpkin story almost every year between 1959 and 1999, skipping only 1972, 1974, 1978, 1992, and 1995. In 1986, a single Great Pumpkin joke was the strip’s entire acknowledgment of Halloween. The recurring storyline could leave little room for other seasonal comedy.
Its apparent roots, though, lie in an ordinary shopping complaint. In the Oct. 23, 1959, strip, Charlie Brown tells Patty he couldn’t buy a Halloween mask because the store had already switched to Christmas decorations.
Peanuts for October 23, 1959. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
That complaint is 67 years old, a useful counterpoint to the assumption that aggressive Christmas commercialization is strictly a worsening 21st-century problem. Polygon reads the Great Pumpkin’s beginnings as a parody of that seasonal sales pressure: a little kid gets Halloween and Christmas tangled up because the shops have already done the same.
The joke’s meaning shifted as Schulz built its lore. By the ’70s, Polygon argues, it had become more of a commentary on religious culture and blind faith, with Linus sometimes going door-to-door to proselytize on the Great Pumpkin’s behalf. The October 31, 1992, strip offers another example of his pumpkin-centered convictions, even though that year is among those without a new Great Pumpkin storyline.
Peanuts for October 31, 1992. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
Five Halloween strips outside the pumpkin patch
Polygon’s five selections from Peanuts take a different path, from the strip’s first Halloween outing to Rerun’s late-run questions about the rules of collecting candy. They run from the strip’s first Halloween outing to Rerun’s late-run questions about the rules of collecting candy.
5. October 29, 1951: The first Halloween strip.
Peanuts for October 29, 1951. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
Peanuts was just over a year old when it first marked Halloween. Its opening year had contained no holiday strips at all; even Christmas was simply another day in 1950.
Here, two costumed children practice their Halloween scares. They might be Charlie Brown and Shermy, but the disguises make it impossible to tell. That uncertainty suits this early version of Peanuts, when the jokes more often came from children doing childlike things rather than the sharply defined personalities that would later drive the strip.
Polygon singles out “ghosting days,” the strip’s name for the period before Halloween, as an especially hard-to-shake bit of wording. The phrase gives those practice scares their own small season.
4. October 30, 1952: Lucy loses a round.
Peanuts for October 30, 1952. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
An unfinished jack-o’-lantern lands on Lucy’s head, an outcome that makes more sense when you remember how different early Lucy was. Lucy van Pelt had arrived in March 1952 and quickly drawn attention away from older characters such as Patty and Violet. Initially depicted as a toddler, she was already stubborn, but her full mean streak took a few years to develop. By roughly 1959, she was becoming the neighborhood tyrant familiar from later strips.
In those first couple of years, she was fussier, more tearful, and more likely to make a mistake at her own expense. Charlie Brown could sometimes win their clashes, or at least defend himself. The pumpkin incident belongs to that earlier balance of power, before his defeats became so dependable.
3. October 29, 1954: A ghost with pockets.
Peanuts for October 29, 1954. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
When Patty warns that Halloween night might be chilly, Schroeder tries putting a jacket over his ghost costume. The fit has mixed results. Polygon’s reason for choosing this one is straightforward: the jacketed ghost is a funny picture, and it doubles as a low-effort costume idea that keeps the pockets accessible. It’s a deep-cut reference without a complicated build.
There’s another curiosity here. Schroeder, introduced as a baby three years earlier, had already grown into something like Charlie Brown’s peer by 1954, while Charlie Brown had barely aged. The strip’s elastic timeline gets him into the Halloween action quickly. It also gives him a joke unrelated to classical music or its history, something that would become increasingly unusual as Peanuts continued.
2. October 31, 1974: Snoopy’s very short horror story.
Peanuts for October 31, 1974. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
With no new Great Pumpkin story in 1974, this standalone exchange between Snoopy and Woodstock was the year’s only Halloween strip. Snoopy needs just 10 words to frighten his bird pal into hiding inside his ear.
For Polygon, the final-panel sight gag earns this strip its place on the list. That particular hiding place rarely appeared elsewhere in the strip’s run. Unlike Linus’s elaborate, annually renewed belief system, Snoopy’s setup needs almost nothing before the picture delivers the payoff.
1. October 28, 1998: Rerun negotiates trick-or-treating.
Peanuts for October 28, 1998. Source: Charles M. Schulz/United Feature Syndicate.
Rerun van Pelt, Lucy and Linus’s younger brother, had been around considerably longer than readers might assume. He first appeared in 1972 in strips about riding around town on the back of his mother’s bicycle. Around 1995, Schulz brought him out of relative obscurity and into a central role. Polygon describes his prominence as making much of ’90s Peanuts feel like the Rerun Show.
In 1998, while Linus prepares for his customary Great Pumpkin activities, Lucy gets ready to take Rerun trick-or-treating for the first time. Rerun wants a bicycle and hopes someone will give him one. Lucy has to explain the catch: you accept whatever treats a particular house offers.
His repeated attempts to receive a bicycle are one running joke; his wide-eyed uncertainty about the world is another. Where earlier characters tend to accept their surroundings or invent rules of their own, Rerun notices absurdities both inside the strip and beyond it. Polygon’s reading of this exchange gives the top pick its edge: once a year, children go around asking neighbors to hand over candy, yet somehow Rerun is the unreasonable one for asking whether a bicycle might be available.
