It's that time of year again, and many of us will once again watch one of the best-loved Halloween holiday-themed programs, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! Like nearly everything connected to the Peanuts series, this brief show admits to a wide range of viewing: from the fun and wit of each vignette taken separately to the beauty of the color palette (and especially the visual storytelling of the opening scene of Lucy and Linus's journey to and from the pumpkin patch, the noting of the passage of time from late afternoon through sunset, dusk, and finally nightfall just by the sky alone being especially delightful) to something more philosophical. If A Charlie Brown Christmas explores what is, or should be, our motive for joy, the Great Pumpkin delves into the murky waters of epistemology of belief. That is, the story asks us to explore just what it is to believe something to be true, when are such beliefs justified, and under what conditions ought beliefs to be abandoned.
To be sure, the central question the characters of the show must confront is belief in the Great Pumpkin. As told by Linus, "On Halloween night, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch and flies through the air with his bag of toys for all the children." His credo is more or less consistent, although he will later clarify that the Great Pumpkin brings toys to "all the good children everywhere" (emphasis mine). Indeed, this latter point serves as the foundation of two further claims on behavior: (1) one should not speak ill of the practice of waiting all night in the pumpkin patch to greet the Great Pumpkin ("Don't talk like that! The Great Pumpkin knows which kids have been good, and which kids have been bad. You'll be sorry!"), and (2) the sincerity of the pumpkin patch in which one waits the Great Pumpkin's arrival is crucially connected to his (non-)arrival ("...he respects sincerity"). Linus asserts (to Sally), "Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He's got to pick this one! He's got to! I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see!"
Moreover, the Great Pumpkin's respect for sincerity calls for a high standard; even a momentary lapse is enough to be passed by without a visit, and so also without toys. Late in the evening, having been mocked by his closest friends and even his own sister, after he has been berated by Sally and blamed by her for have cost her the enjoyment of Halloween, having been fooled by the arrival of Snoopy the think (to the point of fainting) that he had been visited by the Great Pumpkin, Linus does not relent. Indeed, he is prepared to "put in a good word" to the Great Pumpkin to all those who have just abandoned him...except here he slips. He will put in a good word, he says, "if the Great Pumpkin comes." Immediately catching his error, in fear and horror he quickly amends his statement, "Good grief! I said 'if'! I meant when he comes! I'm doomed! One little slip like that can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by." He then adds, in a deep cry of lament worthy of prophets and psalmists of old, "O Great Pumpkin, where are you?!"
Even so, after all that, after waiting in half-slumber in the cold night under the clearly insufficient warmth of his trusty blanket until 4:00 am (for we see his sister's clock when she awakes and, finding Linus not to be in his bed, goes to bring him back to the comfort of home), Linus remains a stalwart believer. In the face of what his friend Charlie Brown intends to be a kind of commiseration (and we'll get to Charlie in a moment!) that he, too, has "done of lot of stupid things" in his life, Linus replies in righteous anger: "Stupid?! What do you mean 'stupid'?! Just wait till next year, Charlie Brown!...I'll see the Great Pumpkin! Just you wait, Charlie Brown! The Great Pumpkin will appear! And I'll be waiting for him!"
At this point, it might seem fair to ask why Linus believes in the Great Pumpkin. We are given no indication that he has ever seen the Great Pumpkin, nor are we led to believe that he has ever been left any toys to mark the Great Pumpkin's coming. None of his friends or his family believe in the Great Pumpkin. In fact, apart from Sally, whose attitude towards Linus's belief we will explore below, all of his friends mock him and the Great Pumpkin as "crazy", "something that isn't true", and as we have just seen, "stupid". His own sister refers to the Great Pumpkin as a "stupid pumpkin" and her brother (to strangers giving out candy on Halloween, no less!) as her "stupid brother" and "stupid blockhead brother", and to his face as a "laughingstock". Linus admits at the close of his letter to the Great Pumpkin, "Everyone tells me you are a fake, but I believe in you," and in his (ironic) postscript, "P.S. If you really are a fake, don't tell me. I don't want to know."
However, we are never told the genesis of Linus's belief. No one else seems to believe, but by Lucy's admission, Linus has missed out (we take it that his belief is not new and his all-night vigil an annual event) several times on "tricks or treats" and the Halloween party that follows, certainly enough times to develop a reputation, one widespread enough to alarm his status-conscious sister, Lucy. So we will need to set aside for a moment how Linus came so to believe, noting only that he does now believe, has done so for some time, and has been willing to alter his behavior to align with his belief, even in the face of ridicule and scorn, as well as both the loss of bodily and social pleasures (going for "tricks or treats" and the party) and the enduring of physical hardship (sleeping outside in the cold late into the night).
Suppose we turn the question around. Suppose we ask why the other children do not believe in the Great Pumpkin. On the surface, this seems an unsound approach. Especially as there seems no evidence in favor of Linus's belief, why would anyone else need to explain their non-belief? Yet, things are not quite that clear. First of all, we know the other children do believe in something parallel, namely Santa Claus, to whom they write letters (consider Sally's letter, dictated to her brother Charlie, in A Charlie Brown Christmas) in protestation of their goodness and hoping he will visit them to bring them gifts. When Charlie confronts Linus about the Great Pumpkin and asks him when he will stop believing in something that isn't true, Linus's reply is telling, "When you stop believing in that fellow with the red suit and a white beard who goes 'Ho ho ho'."
Charlie has to admit that he and Linus are "separated by denominational differences." In other words, the difference between a belief in Santa Claus and a belief in the Great Pumpkin isn't that one is obviously true and the other obviously false, nor one more evident than the other (even if more widespread, but that at least plausibly attributable to, as Linus puts it to the scorn of Snoopy, "more publicity"). Charlie, Sally, Snoopy, even Lucy, believe in Santa Claus because they have been told about him, and by sources that they trust. One might well imagine that the parents of the Peanuts gang told their children about Santa, whose existence is also asserted in books, newspapers, radio, and television (this is the 1960s, after all), and reinforced by the fact the the belief is common and widespread. That the toys do come (for many children) every year certainly adds to the credibility of the story, but it could hardly generate the belief itself. Had they not been told about Santa Claus, they would not believe in him. Moreover, unless they were told by trustworthy sources who ought to know, they would not properly believe, i.e. hold to be true on the basis of the testimony of another.
What we need to see here is that belief is an ordinary, and indeed supremely rational part of our lives. Indeed, it would be irrational to hold that nothing is to be taken as true except what is known directly by our own natural powers. Such a view would yield a deeply impoverished life. Most everything we do every day, from reading the texts on our computer screens or tablets through asking for directions to even ordering a sandwich, all depend on holding things to be true that we only know to be true because we are being or have been told so. Even a hard-headed, skeptical, empirical scientist holds as true most of what he holds about the material world in virtue of believing the words of others. He may have reasons to believe them, and indeed he ought to; such is the nature of belief as opposed to credulity. Even so, his beliefs are rooted in at best second- or third-hand confidence, for example, being confident in a journal because it is run by people whose expertise is confirmed by academic institutions whose credibility is assured by the plausibly, believable work done there in the past, etc. This does not make the belief irrational, but it nonetheless shows that it is belief.
Charlie Brown presents an illustrative case, however, of the problematics of belief. We might think that his early refusal to be taken in by belief in the Great Pumpkin is a sign of Charlie's rationality. However, in the scene just prior to our learning about Linus and the Great Pumpkin, we witness Charlie once again duped by Lucy, flat on his back as he yet again tried to kick the football she was holding which she, once again, pulled away just as he prepared to kick it. At her initial offer to let him kick the ball, Charlie was reasonably suspicious ("You just want me to come running up to kick that ball so you can pull it away and see me fall flat on my back and kill myself!"). She had done this same trick often enough before in the past. However, Lucy changes the conditions. This time, she offers a signed document asserting that she will not pull the ball away. Charlie changes his attitude: "It is signed. It's a signed document. I guess if you have a signed document in your possession, you can't go wrong. This year, I'm really gonna kick that football!" Of course, he is mistaken.
But why? Charlie knows that he needs to rely on belief. He knows that certain kinds of communication are constituted in just such a way that we can, or at least should, certainly need to, rely on them to negotiate life. However, what makes Charlie's an interesting case is that his rational confidence in the reliability of communication is so repeatedly abused. The signed document, which is presented as a guarantee that his experience does not count against the current offer, fails to save him from falling flat on his back (Lucy's quip after the fact that the document was not notarized notwithstanding). Later, Charlie gets a letter inviting him to Violet's Halloween party, and such invitations are taken to be sincere, honest, truly reflecting the will of the one offering the invitation. Once again, Charlie discovered that there was a mistake, that he should have been put on the list of people not to be sent an invitation. What is supposed to be a guarantee of reliability (a letter sent through the post) turns out to be generative of error, or unwarranted belief. Later, when out for "tricks or treats", while all the other kids in his company receive candy of various kinds (or even money!), Charlie alone, repeatedly, and consistently, receives a rock, in violation of the unstated but presumably reliable custom that, in response to the cry "Trick or treat!", the child will be given candy or something else pleasant. Certainly not a rock. Apart from the (dark) humor of all of this, we also see undermined the notion that Linus is being unreasonable in his belief. If he is unreasonable, what are we supposed to make of Charlie Brown? How is Linus supposed to "know" that the Great Pumpkin is a fake when Charlie Brown cannot rely on the spoken word, the mail, or universal custom, even though he does rely on them (and suffers the consequences)?
Sally presents us a different case. She has never heard of the Great Pumpkin, and so she knows nothing either of Linus's belief or of the scorn which others direct towards Linus. In fact, she alone opines that Linus might in fact be correct. ("But maybe there is a Great Pumpkin.") It is significant that the arguments presented against Linus have nothing to do with the plausibility of his belief. The primary, repeated critique of belief in the Great Pumpkin, and the behaviors which that belief enjoins, is that to await the Great Pumpkin entails not going for "tricks or treats" or the Halloween party. That's it. That makes it stupid, crazy, blockheaded, a laughingstock. To be sure, Sally is suspicious of Linus's claims ("That's a good story."), particularly when aware that this year she would be able to go for "ticks or treats" and to the party, upending Linus's conviction that little girls are trusting of whatever is told them. Linus, that is, knows that belief in the Great Pumpkin will require trust in the testimony of another, as does Sally. She needs to check on any number of facts this way. When unsure whether begging for candy on Halloween is legal, she can only accept that it is on Lucy's word (which we have already seen Sally ought to consider of questionable reliability!).
So, what leads Sally to believe? What we see here is that Sally has initial motives for belief that are suspect. She is in love with Linus, and she is inclined to find what he says attractive not because what he says compels her credence, but because she loves the speaker himself ("You say the cutest things!"). In fact, this is why Charlie quickly takes her away from Linus. He knows that her motive to believe will not be grounded in her finding it plausible that Linus would know about the Great Pumpkin, nor in a kind of inner testimony responding to the claims themselves. Rather, her motive would be an excuse to spend time with the boy with whom she has fallen in love. ("What's going on here? What are you trying to do to my little sister?") When her desires shift, when her desire for the (now forever lost) opportunity to go out for "tricks or treats" or for attending the Halloween candy proves itself stronger than her love of Linus, she quickly abandons her short-lived belief in the Great Pumpkin.
What this reminds us is that belief will not infrequently, and sometimes always, require, in addition to the plausibility of the witness whose testimony we receive, a motive for holding that in which our own reason may itself be insufficient, either situationally or perhaps (in the case of religious belief) intrinsically, unable to compel consent. Of course, if there is no Great Pumpkin, then the explanation of Linus's steadfastness must be found elsewhere, in his psychology, or character, or some other factor. But supposing he had such a steadfast faith in what was beyond his power to know, but within his power to know must be, could he not accept his inner impulse to hold fast to such belief? Should he not be open to those inner promptings which, confirmed even if not compelled by evidence without, and stirring assent within? Should he not, in other words, come to and remain in faith?
