Religious Metaphors
Linus's seemingly unshakable belief in the Great Pumpkin, and his desire to foster the same belief in others, has been interpreted as a parody of Christian evangelism by some observers. Others have seen Linus's belief in the Great Pumpkin as symbolic of the struggles faced by anyone with beliefs or practices that are not shared by the majority. Still others view Linus's lonely vigils, in the service of a being that may or may not exist and which never makes its presence known in any case, as a metaphor for mankind's basic existential dilemmas. Charles Schulz himself, however, claimed no motivation beyond the humor of having one of his young characters confuse Halloween with Christmas. (In the 1959 sequence of strips in which the Great Pumpkin is first mentioned, Schulz also has Linus suggest that he and the other kids "go out and sing pumpkin carols", something he asks the trick-or-treating kids in the special itself.)
Read more about this topic: The Great Pumpkin
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