Just the Way You Are (Sincerity)

It’s that time of year again: the days are getting shorter and the leaves are falling from the trees. Some people gather around the campfire to make s’mores, while others line up for their favorite squash-flavored, caffeinated beverage (you know which one we’re talking about…).

Anyway, for Nick, the arrival of fall means that we’re inching closer to his favorite part of the year: the holiday season. While his go-to is that window between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there’s no denying that Halloween is what kicks it all off. And Halloween has some wonderful traditions of its own: costumes, trick-or-treating, haunted houses, scary movies (although, it’s been discovered that Nick is a big scaredy-cat and doesn’t do those)… and, of course, Halloween movies and tv specials.

There’s many notable mentions, but Nick’s favorite halloween-related media premiered over 50 years ago and is widely considered to be the FIRST halloween special.

“It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is really hard to summarize. It’s about Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang celebrating Halloween, right? There’s a halloween party, bobbing for apples, trick or treating, and of course, the Great Pumpkin.

At one point, Linus provides an important bit of information about the Great Pumpkin and its mythology:

“He’ll come here because we have the most sincere pumpkin patch and he respects sincerity. 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! You can look all around and there’s not a sound of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see…”

So, spoiler alert: The Great Pumpkin does NOT show up by the end of the episode. In fact, over the course of almost 50 years of the Peanuts comic strip, and in dozens of Peanuts animated specials, Linus never sees the Great Pumpkin. Yet despite that, his belief never waivers.

If we take Linus at his word – that the Great Pumpkin rises from the most sincere pumpkin patch – then, we have to assume that Linus’ patch has simply never been the most sincere. Otherwise, the Great Pumpkin would have risen from there.

And, MAYBE, it never happened because sincerity is a hard thing to just MAKE happen on a dime. “Ready, set, BE SINCERE.” Sincerity also seems to be greatly lacking in the world today. We rarely see it in our lives – and it’s even more rare on TV or on social media.

In this week’s episode of Where There’s Smoke, Nick, with a little help from Brett, is going to take a concerted crack at trying to figure out what sincerity really looks like. The Peanuts gang, Chris Gethard, and even Mr. Rogers will add their thoughts along the way. Perhaps we can figure out what sincerity actually looks like and how we can make it a bigger part of our lives.