A Classic For Our Times

Aren't there things that just make the season for you? I say it can't be Christmas until I hear the theme music from "Charlie Brown Christmas", and it can't really be Halloween until I see "It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown".

Now, during the past few years, it isn't that easy to find these kinds of former blockbusters on TV on a regular basis. Reality rules on most tv channels, and this is pure fantasy. So I took the bull by the horns and bought the DVD, ostensibly for the M & M's to watch, but really for Grandma to fulfill her October dream.

It is funny, that crude animation designed and recorded decades ago somehow looks funny next to Pixar's "animation near to photographic quality" movies. And the funny bits were somehow lost on a 4 year old trying to understand why the dog was flying and being shot at on top of his doghouse. He just didn't get the subtleties of '60's humor. Guess he hasn't seen many World War I movies, where single seater planes fought eye to eye with the enemy. Was it really that long ago that this was first published? Yes, dear, it was 1966. Whew, how time flies.

I often say there are certain things I must do to properly celebrate the season, and as I said before, this is the one that lets me feel like Halloween has been properly introduced. Then I can get out the costumes, the decorations and plan for the candy basket and feel in the spirit of things. So I showed it to the grandkids the other day. They were unimpressed, but I loved it! There's still a piece of kid in me that says it isn't Halloween without the Great Pumpkin in your life.

P.S. HINT: Don't plan too far ahead on that candy basket, a mistake which I made. It has been emptied once, and refilled and is dwindling fast in this house, with Halloween over 2 weeks away. The only answer is to plan on filling it with candy that you DO NOT LIKE. Then it will stay filled until Halloween night when you can give the nasty stuff away!