Linus has been waiting for The Great Pumpkin for at least 65 years. Every Halloween, he ventures out to what he hopes is the most sincere pumpkin patch, because that’s the only one the Great Pumpkin would appear in. But every year, Linus disappoints his friends–and himself–for a while. By the end of the night, he convinces himself that The Great Pumpkin is definitely out there somewhere and will choose make an appearance the following year.
2025 is the year that Linus and The Great Pumpkin are in the same field. This is a sign of hope.
For the first time, I’ve gone meta: a pumpkin within a pumpkin. I chose a large, white gourd to house the scene, and also a smaller pumpkin that showed up on its own in our garden this year. It’s bursting through the bigger pumpkin wall like the Kool-Aid man. I used glow-in-the-dark paint and some mystical glass eyeballs to portray an ethereal-but-friendly Great Pumpkin.
The tiny pumpkins in the field are made out of Sculpey, the vines from Creeping Jenny plants, and all the leaves and dahlias came from the yard. Doug Fir pinecones and branches came from a nearby park.
So Linus finally gets his wish. The Great Pumpkin herself, aglow with mischief and magnificence, emerging from within the shell of his own hopes. Was it the sincerity of the patch? The decades of belief? Or the fact that the only witness is Snoopy, who can’t tell everyone that Linus was right after all?
This pumpkin is a reminder that if you keep showing up (especially in striped pajamas), the magic will eventually show up too.
Nimble Narrative 