Only Sally joins him, but her motive is not pure; she is doing it for the object of her affection, Linus, while Linus is doing it for his god. In the end, she too betrays him, leaving him chattering in the cold, waiting for what will never arrive.

Lucy retrieves her brother at 4 a.m., leads him home and puts him to bed. In one of the most tender moments ever captured on TV, she takes off his socks, for only when the feet are free can the spirit rest. Though Linus has been disappointed and his god has not risen, he sleeps the sleep of the righteous. It’s the same sleep as that of the fisherman at the end of “The Old Man and the Sea”; he’s spent and the sharks have devoured the marlin, but the prize was never the catch. It was the quest, the effort and the suffering.

In the final scene, Charlie Brown tries to console Linus about his wasted night in the pumpkin patch by saying, “I did a lot of stupid things in my life, too.” This enrages Linus, who vows to find an “even more sincere” pumpkin patch next year. Experience is no match for faith.

For many viewers, the special might offer a pagan vision. Schulz himself, who taught Sunday school and clearly drew on Christianity in constructing the scenario (Gethsemane, death and resurrection), didn’t shy away from this interpretation. As described in David Michaelis’s biography “Schulz and ‘Peanuts,’” the artist once responded to a letter writer by agreeing with her assertion that the Great Pumpkin was “ sacrilegious .” His intent, he wrote, was to use the pumpkin deity as a metaphor for Santa Claus.

John Updike dismissed “The Great Pumpkin” as “travesty if not blasphemy.” Not long ago, I came across a sermon online that used the special to demonstrate the fate of those who worship false gods. Linus follows a nature god instead of Jesus, and look where it leaves him? Chattering alone in the cold.

According to the sermon, “Linus’s belief is one of the most common beliefs about religion: It does not matter what a person believes in. As long as they are sincere in their belief, the object of their faith is irrelevant and their faith is legitimate. Because the Great Pumpkin never shows, Schulz, simply and brilliantly, communicates sincerity is worthless if the object of faith is false.”

But to me, the sincerity in “The Great Pumpkin” is key and is what has drawn me to its magic year after year . It’s what you believe but also the sincerity of that belief that can give your life meaning. Sincere belief can order an otherwise formless succession of days, and it is meaningful days, collected together, that add up to a meaningful life.