Dec. 11: Haunted pumpkin face in space

Linus always intrigued me. He's a study in contradictions. In the Peanuts world, he was the eternal philosopher, the thumb-sucking stoic, the pint sized Augustine. It was Linus who told Charlie Brown what Christmas was all about. It was Linus who was, so often, the epitome of ration and logic.

But every Halloween, he did an about face and became a fierce apologist for the Great Pumpkin, who, he believed, rose from a pumpkin patch every year and brought toys to all the good little boys and girls. The Great Pumpkin was a subject of some debate among Peanuts fans. Some saw it as a parody of religious fanaticism, though Schulz simply thought it would be charming to have one of his young characters confuse the traditions of Halloween and Christmas.

Others thought Schulz was pointing his finger at parents who lie to their kids about Santa Claus, saying that legend is as ridiculous as the Great Pumpkin.

I concur.

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All this is a lame segue to say that if the Great Pumpkin ever were to appear, we might describe him as a haunted pumpkin face in space. 

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In 1982, one of the strangest horror movies of all time was unleashed on the world. It was called Halloween 3: Season of the Witch and it was all about these Halloween masks that would kill you if you wore them while watching a particular television commercial. After you died, bugs would come out of your mouth and kill people nearby. The masks were manufactured, I think, by aliens who wanted to use the masks to sacrifice children on Halloween and bring about the return of the Great Pumpkin or the devil or the age of Aquarius or a Stanley Cup for the Vancouver Canucks.

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You could see a haunted pumpkin face in space if you just use your imagination hard enough. If there's one thing we learned from Mark Haddon's The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time, it's that it's silly to insist that the stars should agree to align themselves with Earthling traditions. The book's narrator, Christopher, argues as such:

"People say that Orion is called Orion because Orion was a hunter and the constellation looks like a hunter with a club and a bow and arrow ... but this is really silly because it's just stars, and you could join up the dots anyway you wanted, and you could make it look like a lady with an umbrella who is waving, or the coffee maker Mrs. Shears has, which is from Italy, with a handle and steam coming out, or a dinosaur."

Christopher destroys our romantic astronomy even more by pointing out that the dots that make up Orion are just "Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and Alninam and Rigel and 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away."

And there you go, folks. As I say at least once a day, "perception is more important than reality."

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When I read those words in Mark Haddon's book, I was jazzed man. I remember having those same thoughts about constellations when I was in grade school. I wondered who got to map the constellations? Who decided that they should be inspired by ancient myths? History has forgotten whose idea it was to name our planets after Roman deities and it's still a mystery why we have forced the night sky to walk hand in hand with tales from antiquity.

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I have taken Christopher (really Mark Haddon's) words and married them to the title that my friend, the author and physician, Melissa Yi, has kindly provided me. Here then is a haunted pumpkin face in space. This was not none willy-nilly, it was done by playing dot-to-dot with actual stars in the night sky. I might have borrowed a star from Ursa Major or Hydra. I offer no apologies for this. The stars belong to no one.

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But back to Linus and Charlie Brown, et al. Back in 1966, someone published a book of Pumpkin carols. They were inspired by Linus's naivete and the book itself featured plenty of Peanuts artwork. I will close this note with my favourite carol from that old book, which is sung to the tune of ... ahhh, I think you can figure it out.

Oh, you better not shriek,
You better not groan,
You better not howl,
You better not moan,
Great Pumpkin is comin’ to town!

He’s going to find out,
From folks that he meets,
Who deserves tricks,
And who deserves treats,
Great Pumpkin is comin’ to town!

He’ll search in every pumpkin patch,
Haunted houses far and near,
To see if you’ve been spreading gloom,
Or bringing lots of cheer.

So, you better not shriek,
You better not groan,
You better not howl,
You better not moan,
Great Pumpkin is comin’ to town!